With all eyes focused on Brazil, where G20 leaders (minus Vladimir Putin) have been hashing out what to do about Russia and Ukraine, another global summit has got less attention: Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The Cop29 summit began inauspiciously, with Azerbaijan’s president kicking off proceedings by calling oil and gas a “gift of God”. Its closing discussions have been fraught – not just on the issue of this year’s main theme of finance to assist developing countries to cope with the climate crisis (outlined by the New Statesman’s Megan Kenyon), but also over measures and targets to cut emissions and transition away from fossil fuels.
On Thursday, Ed Miliband spoke at a plenary, warning that “we cannot afford to fail at this Cop.” The Energy Secretary continued: “We must bridge those differences and for our part in the UK we stand ready to do that.”
While other world leaders – including that of the US, China, India and France – chose to skip Cop this year, Keir Starmer was there too on Monday before heading to Brazil. The Prime Minister’s decision to attend in part reflects how important this issue is to the Labour government – making Britain “a clean energy superpower” is, after all, one of five missions.
But it is also the continuation of the UK’s leadership on climate, which dates back to the Conservatives. (And, indeed, further back. The late John Prescott was a global champion of climate action back in the New Labour era.) It was Theresa May’s government that passed legislation for the UK to reach net zero by 2050, making Britain the first country to make that commitment legally binding. Boris Johnson was, at least outwardly, fully behind the pledge when he was Prime Minister, showcasing British leadership at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021 and warning the world was at “one minute to midnight”.
That feels very far away now. In February, I interviewed Chris Skidmore, the minister who singed the net zero pledge into law. He had stood down as both a Tory and an MP and triggered a by-election in protest of Rishi Sunak watering down key climate measures, particularly the granting of new oil and gas licences. He told me it was entirely in keeping with Conservative values and principles to invest in clean technology to safeguard the UK’s economic resilience, as well as getting ahead of a global trend: “Climate leadership is an economic opportunity as much as an environmental necessity.” It wasn’t he who had changed, he argued, it was his party.
Starmer faced the newly climate-sceptical iteration of the Tory party when he returned from Brazil. In the Commons on Thursday, Kemi Badenoch attacked the Prime Minister’s announcement of more ambitious targets for cutting UK emissions, accusing the government of putting “politics before people and press releases before practicality”. (She also obliquely criticised Starmer’s decision to be out of the country when farmers protested in Westminster, which implies the leader of the opposition doesn’t think the Prime Minister of the UK should attend a global summit of world leaders, but I digress.) Starmer, for his part, responded by pointing out that “when Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the House about the importance of tackling one of those central issues of our time,” adding as a dig at Badenoch, “I was proud that under some of her predecessors we had that unity”.
There were always voices within the Conservative party arguing that net zero would be too costly, impose too many regulations and damage both the economy and living standards. Theresa May’s climate legislation was rushed through at the very end of the premiership. The agenda was held together while Boris Johnson looked popular, but the cross-party consensus on climate started fraying when the Tories’ poll ratings started falling. Now, with the Conservatives in opposition and Nigel Farage and Reform set on turning net zero into the next Brexit-like wedge issue, climate policy has become a battleground.
And, indeed, there are tensions within Labour too. While GB Energy, the government’s flagship body for investing in clean power, was launched in July, the £28bn that was initially meant to go with it was deemed unaffordable and scrapped by Labour back in February. The cost of living crisis is still raging, and this morning Ofgem has announced that the energy price cap will be rising in January (unfortunate for the government given this week’s cold snap and the continued outrage over withdrawing the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners). Some in the party worry that Labour cannot afford to look like it is focusing too much on lofty climate ambitions at the expense of ordinary people who are struggling, with a perception that more attention is being paid to things like the Clean Power 2030 project than to retrofitting homes to be better insulated now. Farage and the Tories are just waiting to accuse the government of being out-of-touch and naïve – especially given the disinterest at Cop from some of the world’s biggest polluters in collaborating.
The counter-argument is that even with China and the US sitting this one out, British leadership on climate really can make a difference. Behind the scenes in Baku, Miliband – a seasoned pro at Cop summits – has been helping drive negotiations forward and finding a way round various sticking points. Starmer’s presence earlier in the week has been noted by other attendees. So has the UK’s ambitious targets. Britain has an opportunity to set an example and show the world that a green energy transition can be good for business.
In a special supplement in this week’s New Statesman magazine, Chris Skidmore wrote on the potential of the green transition, arguing “That is the triple bonus that net zero can achieve if we want it: better energy security, better jobs and growth and a better environment. It’s a triple top line we should all be able to agree upon.” That used to be a cross-party sentiment. Now? Things are more complicated.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Labour can no longer hide from the cost of Brexit]
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