Energy transition is ‘growth opportunity of the century’

The UK is “falling behind” other countries in the fight against climate change and has been “too slow to act” in response to US and EU subsidies for green industries, former Prime Minister Theresa May said.
In a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of the UK putting its 2050 net zero target into law – a decision made under her leadership – May described the energy transition as the “growth opportunity of the century.”
However, she warned that foreign subsidies were “reshaping global supply chains before our eyes,” and, that without a “clear response,” the UK was “putting at risk its reputation as a leader in climate policy.”
The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the EU Green Deal Industrial plan were both “already impacting” the UK economy, May said, citing job cuts at car manufacturer Ford, battery manufacturers’ plans to move overseas, and a 10 per cent reduction in investment in the U.K. renewables sector.
Addressing growing calls from some Conservative politicians and tabloid newspapers for the UK to drop its net zero targets amid ostensible concerns about costs to taxpayers, May argued the problem was “not that the UK’s transition to a green economy is moving too fast. In fact, we have been slow to act in the face of intense competition from abroad. Where the UK once led, we are now falling behind.”
The former prime minister was speaking at the launch of a new net zero report by the business association, the Aldersgate Group, which she chairs. “I decided that a major developed country needed to lead – and I thought that it should be Britain,” she added.
May’s words echoed criticism from the Government’s independent advisors, the Committee on Climate Change who concluded that the UK had “lost its clear global leadership position” on climate change. Her speech prompted the long-standing environment minister Lord Zac Goldsmith to quit the Sunak Government. In his resignation letter, the former editor of The Ecologist magazine stated he had been “horrified” by the government’s decision to drop a range of environmental commitments “domestically and on the world stage.”
Goldsmith told Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: “You are simply uninterested. This government’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable.”