How do the Tories solve a problem like net zero?

‘There’s a huge prize there if we get it right,’ says Tory MP Lee Rowley of the move to net zero. But there’s a big question mark hanging over this mission: how to get there without alienating voters and damaging the economy?

Andrew Griffith, Boris Johnson’s ex-chief business advisor and the government’s net zero champion, warns that the path to switching away from carbon-based energy won’t be easy. ‘We’re going to unplumb the world economy,’ he says, pointing out that throughout the history of human progress burning fossil fuels has, until now, powered the engines of growth. If the last industrial revolution was disruptive, there’s no reason to think this latest upheaval in pursuit of green energy will be any different, he points out.

So how to do it? The job of the government is to ‘provide clarity of direction’ when it comes to reaching net zero, he says.