Tories hijacked by Big Oil: How Britain’s Conservatives let polluters take control
Once champions of Net Zero, the Conservative Party is now parroting fossil-fuel talking points and embracing climate sceptics as critics warn it has become the political arm of the polluters
In a jaw-dropping shift that would make even the most hardened political observer raise an eyebrow, the once-proud Conservative Party now appears to be sailing under the flag of Big Oil—wholeheartedly embracing the very polluters it once professed to tame.
Dodgy climate studies
As reported by Desmog, at the centre of the storm is Claire Coutinho, the Tory shadow energy secretary, who has thrown her weight behind not one, but two deeply dubious reports attacking Britain’s legally binding Net Zero climate targets. But here’s the kicker: both of these so-called “studies” come from groups closely tied to the fossil fuel industry and climate denial lobbyists, not independent experts.
On 12 January, Coutinho proudly launched a report by energy consultancy Watt-Logic, claiming that increasing renewable energy capacity will somehow trigger blackouts. This extraordinary claim was immediately dismissed by the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO), which stressed that the UK already has one of the world’s most secure energy systems, and that any recent supply issues were down to volatile gas prices, not green energy.
Who’s lurking behind the curtain?
Watt-Logic’s boss? Kathryn Porter—a figure long associated with oil and gas interests, who openly works for clients with gas-fired power stations, upstream oil and gas production and fossil fuel storage. She has even written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s best-known climate science denial group.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Coutinho also endorsed a second report—this one by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)—claiming Net Zero will cost a staggering £9 trillion by 2050. That figure is around 90 times higher than the independent Climate Change Committee’s estimate and has been labelled “absolutely shameless” by energy experts because it absurdly assumes fossil fuel energy is free.
Remember that name: the IEA. Far from being impartial, it has historical financial ties to fossil fuel giants such as Shell and BP and sits within the controversial Tufton Street network, a hub for climate sceptics and anti-green lobbyists.
Another stain on the dirty Tory legacy
It’s a stunning reversal for a party that once passed the Climate Change Act, committed the country to Net Zero and talked proudly about Britain leading the clean energy transition. Today’s Tories are ditching those pledges faster than campaign leaflets in a rainstorm. Under pressure from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, the party’s leader has even called Net Zero “impossible” and proposed scrapping the 2008 law altogether.
Critics are aghast. Where once Conservative politicians balanced environmental ambition with economic realism, now it seems their compass has been seized by polluters and handed to lobbyists whose primary interest is not clean air or secure jobs, but protecting oil and gas profits.
Indeed, DeSmog’s previous investigations have shown that the Conservatives have taken millions of pounds from fossil fuel interests and prominent climate sceptics—a catalogue of “dirty donations” that raises serious questions about who really pulls the strings in today’s Tory ranks.
In abandoning mainstream climate science and leaning so heavily into anti-Net Zero claptrap from polluter-aligned think tanks, the Conservatives look less like a government-in-waiting and more like the political wing of Big Oil—a party overtaken by the very forces that are accelerating the climate crisis.
The question now is simple: who do they truly serve? The public, or the polluters?