Environment secretary Steve Reed plays down significance of Blair’s attack on net zero policies
In his interview with Times Radio, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, was specifically asked about the claim from an unnamed Labour source who said that Tony Blair’s net zero comments amounted to a tantrum. (See 9.46am.) Asked if he agreed, Reed replied: “No, I don’t.”
Reed also played down the extent to which the Blair article amounted to criticism of government policy. He said:
One of the other points that Tony is making in his piece is that there needs to be more focus on carbon capture and storage technology. Well, we agree with that. The government is investing £22bn in that technology. That’s the highest amount any government has ever invested.
So I think we are doing what Tony Blair says he wants to see, but we’re also shifting away from dependence, over-dependence on fossil fuels because it’s better for the country to take control of our own energy.
And, in an interview with LBC, asked if Blair was right to say “net zero is doomed”, Reed replied:
I don’t think that’s quite what Tony Blair said, to be a fair. This government is transitioning the economy away from being dependent on fossil fuels.
In the foreword he wrote to the report published by his thinktank yesterday, Blair did not explicitly talk about UK government policy (he was talking about climate policy in the developing world generally – although the points he made apply as much to the UK as to anywhere else) and he did not directly mention the 2050 net zero target. But he did say:
Any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.
