At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Kemi Badenoch's flagship policy document cited £957 billion as the cost of reaching net zero by 2050 — a figure, it turns out, that was nearly double the actual estimate provided by the government's own climate advisers. The error, apparently born from a spreadsheet that counted the same figures twice, quietly found its way into think tank reports and political speeches before Carbon Brief uncovered the discrepancy. In a document that explicitly champions accurate diagnosis as the foundation of good governance, the miscalculation strikes at s
Tories overstate net zero cost by £500bn in apparent spreadsheet error
To fix a problem we must first have an accurate understanding of what is causing it.
Mark
So someone at Conservative headquarters just... miscalculated by half a trillion pounds?
Mimi
It looks like a spreadsheet error—they included the row totals twice, which doubled everything. But the real question is how it got into the main policy document and then stayed there.
Luke
Right, and we should be clear: we don't know if anyone checked it. We know it appeared in the CCC's original spreadsheet, and we know it ended up in the Tory document. The chain between those two points is still a bit murky.
Mark
Did anyone else use the wrong number?
Mimi
Yes. The Institute of Economic Affairs published it, and the Spectator ran it too. So it spread beyond just the Conservative Party.
Luke
Though we don't know if they independently made the same error or just copied it from somewhere. That's worth noting.
Mark
What's the actual cost, then?
Mimi
The Climate Change Committee says about £4 billion a year, or 0.2 percent of GDP. So roughly one-fifth of what the Tories claimed.
Luke
And that's their most recent estimate. The document cited an older CCC report from 2020, which is where the £957 billion figure came from—or rather, where half of it came from.
Mark
Does this change the argument about scrapping net zero?
Mimi
It certainly complicates it. If the cost is actually much lower than the government said, the economic case for abandoning the target gets weaker.
Luke
Though to be fair, cost isn't the only reason they gave. But it was a prominent one, and now that number is unreliable.
El Pulso
- A £500 billion overstatement of net zero costs formed the numerical backbone of the Conservative Party's case for scrapping the UK's 2050 climate target.
- The error — a spreadsheet double-count of Climate Change Committee data — spread unchecked into rightwing think tank reports and a Spectator article before anyone raised an alarm.
- Carbon Brief, an independent climate publication, identified the discrepancy and brought it to the Guardian, exposing the gap between the £957bn claim and the CCC's actual £478bn figure.
- The Climate Change Committee has said it does not recognise the inflated number and has reiterated a standing offer to brief Badenoch directly on their analysis.
- With the real annual cost estimated at roughly 0.2% of GDP, the economic argument for abandoning net zero is left significantly weaker than the party's own platform suggested.
At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Kemi Badenoch's flagship policy document cited £957 billion as the cost of reaching net zero by 2050 — a figure, it turns out, that was nearly double the actual estimate provided by the government's own climate advisers. The error, apparently born from a spreadsheet that counted the same figures twice, quietly found its way into think tank reports and political speeches before Carbon Brief uncovered the discrepancy. In a document that explicitly champions accurate diagnosis as the foundation of good governance, the miscalculation strikes at something deeper than arithmetic — it raises questions about how numbers become arguments, and how arguments become policy.
Kemi Badenoch's 100-page policy document, The Right Way, unveiled at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, made a bold claim: reaching net zero by 2050 would cost Britain £957 billion. Badenoch cited the figure in her main conference speech, using it to justify the party's decision to scrap the climate target introduced under Theresa May. The document was explicitly modelled on Thatcher's 1976 policy platform, and Badenoch's foreword invoked her engineering background as a guarantee of rigorous, accurate thinking.
The figure was wrong by nearly half. The Climate Change Committee — the government's official climate advisers — puts the actual cost at £478 billion, with annual expenses running at roughly £4 billion, or about 0.2% of GDP. The error appears to have originated in a spreadsheet that accidentally counted row totals twice, effectively doubling the real numbers. The same inflated figure had already appeared in a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs and in the Spectator, suggesting the mistake circulated widely before anyone checked it against the source.
It was Carbon Brief, an independent climate and energy publication, that identified the discrepancy and brought it to the Guardian. The Climate Change Committee, when contacted, said it did not recognise the £957 billion figure and noted that its offer to meet with Badenoch and walk her through the actual analysis remained open.
The irony is difficult to ignore. A document that declares accurate diagnosis the prerequisite for fixing any problem had built one of its central arguments on a number that was demonstrably inaccurate. With the real cost substantially lower than claimed, the Conservative case for abandoning the 2050 net zero target — at least on economic grounds — is left considerably harder to sustain. Badenoch's office had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
Kemi Badenoch's flagship policy document, unveiled at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, contained a striking numerical error: it claimed the cost of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would be £957 billion. The figure appeared repeatedly in The Right Way, a 100-page policy platform that Badenoch herself cited in her main conference speech. The document used this estimate to justify the party's decision to scrap the 2050 net zero target that had been introduced under Theresa May.
The problem is that the actual figure was half that amount. According to the Climate Change Committee—the government's official climate advisers—the real cost totals £478 billion, not £957 billion. The error appears to have originated in a spreadsheet where someone accidentally included row totals twice, effectively doubling the figures. The CCC's own most recent analysis puts the annual cost of achieving net zero at roughly £4 billion per year, or about 0.2 percent of GDP.
The mistake was discovered by Carbon Brief, an independent publication focused on climate and energy policy, which then alerted the Guardian. It is unclear whether the Conservatives simply copied the inflated figure without verification, but the number had already circulated beyond the party's own documents. The same £957 billion estimate appeared in a report published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightwing think tank, and was also cited in an article in the Spectator magazine.
When contacted about the discrepancy, a Climate Change Committee spokesperson said the organization did not recognize the figure and reiterated that they had previously offered to meet with Badenoch to walk her through their actual analysis. That offer, the spokesperson noted, remained open.
The error carries particular weight because of how Badenoch framed the document itself. In her foreword, she emphasized that as an engineer, she is accustomed to correctly diagnosing problems so they can be addressed. A later section of the policy paper states: "To fix a problem we must first have an accurate understanding of what is causing it." The Right Way was explicitly modeled on The Right Approach, a policy document produced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party in 1976, which laid out economic ideas that would later inform the 1979 election campaign.
The overstatement of net zero costs by nearly £500 billion undermines a central pillar of the Conservative argument for abandoning the 2050 target. If the actual cost is substantially lower than claimed—and if the government's own climate advisers say the annual expense amounts to less than half a percent of GDP—the case for scrapping the commitment becomes harder to sustain on economic grounds alone. The Conservatives and Badenoch's office were asked for comment on the discrepancy but had not responded at the time of publication.
Citas Notables
We don't recognise this number. The committee has previously offered to meet with Ms Badenoch and talk her through our advice.— Climate Change Committee spokesperson
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