Experts release list of 45 misleading statements on climate change made by Reform

Martin Shipton

An award-winning website specialising in the science and policy of climate change has listed 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy made by Reform UK politicians.

Carbon Brief states: “Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has emerged as a major force in UK politics in recent years – pushing anti-net-zero policies, alongside vehement opposition to immigration.

“As seen with many similar parties across Europe and beyond, a rejection of climate science is central to Reform’s ideological outlook.

“Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is a vocal critic of what he calls ‘net stupid zero’ and has incorrectly blamed ‘the sun or volcanoes’ for human-caused global warming.

“As Reform’s energy spokesperson, Tice has also been clear that, if the party were ever to form a national government, it would scrap the UK’s net-zero target, support fossil-fuel expansion and tear up existing contracts for renewable energy.

“While less vocal on the subject, Farage has, nevertheless, expressed climate-sceptic views and falsely blamed net-zero policies for the ‘deindustrialisation of Britain’.

“These views draw on long-standing, inaccurate climate-sceptic narratives and are reflected in Reform’s election manifestos, its actions in local government and the opinions of many of its supporters.”

Here are some of the claims highlighted by Carbon Brief:

Climate science

FALSE

Tice: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change…The Norwegian government’s own equivalent of our ONS [Office of National Statistics] has recently produced a report along the lines of what I’m saying.”

The world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the planet, primarily through releasing greenhouse gases.

The IPCC says that, due to human activities, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) “have increased at rates that have no precedent on centennial timescales in at least the past 800,000 years”.

It adds that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for at least the past two million years.

The report Tice is referring to is by two independent authors, with Statistics Norway clarifying in 2024 that their views are “not the official stance” of the statistics bureau. It has also not been formally peer reviewed.

A factcheck of the Norwegian report by a climate scientist for RealClimate describes it as “misguided” and a “distraction due to errors”.

Another factcheck published by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found it “contains standard talking-points of climate denial”.

MISLEADING

Tice: “Look, the climate’s always changed for millions of years. And it goes through cycles, long, medium and short.”

Global temperatures are currently around 1.4C hotter than when the industrial era first began in 1850-1900.

The IPCC says this amount of warming is likely to have made Earth hotter than at any time in about 125,000 years.

Net-zero target

FALSE

Tice: “Net-zero will make zero difference to climate change.”

In fact, reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the IPCC.

At that point, when CO2 emissions have been cut substantially and any remaining emissions are balanced by CO2-removal technology or tree planting, warming is expected to essentially stop.

FALSE

Tice: “It’s incredibly stupid for the UK to almost unilaterally say, we’re going to lead the way in the world.”

Carbon Brief says it is false to argue that the UK is acting “unilaterally” to tackle climate change.

The UK has been a leader in climate legislation. When the then-Conservative government set the UK a legally binding “net-zero by 2050” target in 2019, it was the first major economy to do so.

However, 140 of the world’s 198 countries now have net-zero targets, covering 74% of the world’s emissions. Some have set more ambitious goals, such as Germany’s target of reaching net-zero by 2045, while others are aiming for “net-negative” emissions.

The UK is, therefore, not pursuing net-zero “unilaterally”. Carbon Brief says that if the UK abandoned its net-zero target, it would join the US and Iran as the only major emitters without one.

Energy costs

FALSE

Farage: “If we had carbon-free electricity it would cost over a trillion – and maybe nearer two – to upgrade the entirety of our grid.”

Cutting the UK’s emissions by using clean power to run an electrified economy is expected to significantly reduce consumer bills.

This is because electrified technologies, such as EVs and heat pumps, are significantly more efficient than fossil-fuel alternatives.

Moreover, the UK would be consolidating three separate energy systems – electricity, gas and transport fuel – into a unified, more efficient and electrified whole.

It would cost £108bn to reach the UK’s net-zero target – including a “carbon-free” electricity grid – according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

This includes the investment needed to build a low-carbon energy system instead of maintaining one built on fossil fuels.

Crucially, it also takes into account the running costs of the two systems, such as the much higher cost of fuel needed for petrol cars.

Investing in a net-zero economy would bring benefits worth around £865bn, according to the government. Unlike the CCC figures, this includes avoided climate damages.

Carbon Brief says it is not clear where Mr Farage’s claim comes from.

The 2024 Reform UK manifesto included a similar claim that the “cost of net-zero has been estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more”.

In reality, the then-National Grid Electricity System Operator – now Neso – said in 2020 that the cost of building and operating the UK energy system would be “broadly the same”, with or without net-zero.

It is true that the UK will need to invest heavily in upgrading its electricity grid. This will cost some £64bn up to 2030 and another £89bn in the following decade, according to Neso.

Carbon Brief says this is around 10 times lower than Mr Farage’s claim and does not include the savings the investment could unlock, such as cheaper travel with electric vehicles.

Oil and gas

MISLEADING

Tice: “Let me remind you, in the 80s and 90s…we were growing at between 2.5% and 4% a year. We had deep, plentiful energy driven by oil and gas from the North Sea, right? No one was worried about the price of electricity. No one was worried about the quantity of supply. No one was worried about the reliability of supply.”

The UK extracted a significant proportion of its oil and gas resources from the 1980s onwards, after privatising the industry and using the revenue to cut income taxes.

Now, as anticipated at the time, there is very little fuel left to drill.

The UK went through a “dash for gas” in the 1990s, with North Sea gas production levels steadily increasing from the 1980s until the 2000s.

However, gas production in the North Sea fell by 74% between 2000 and 2025, while oil output fell by 75%.

Carbon Brief says this is not because policies favouring new oil and gas production ended, but because of competition from cheaper sources of the fuels and because the amount of fossil fuels left in the North Sea basin started to run out.

According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank, around 90% of the oil and gas likely to be produced from the North Sea has already been burned.

It is also true that electricity prices were much lower in the 1990s than they are today. Carbon Brief says this is largely explained by rising gas prices and increasing exposure to imports.

The UK’s dash for gas power was driven by cheap gas prices, which favoured a shift away from coal and nuclear. This included cancelling a planned fleet of new nuclear reactors.

When gas subsequently became expensive, electricity prices went up because the UK was heavily exposed to the fuel. Carbon Brief says this dynamic continues today, although the rise of renewables is starting to break the link between gas and power prices.

Clean energy

MISLEADING

Tice: “80% of the offshore renewables is overseas owned. So the British consumer is being shafted to help overseas investors.”

Around the world, more than 90% of new renewable power projects are cheaper than new fossil-fuelled generation.

An energy system built around renewable power and electrified technologies such as EVs is also the lowest-cost option in the UK.

While it is true that more than 80% of UK offshore windfarms are owned by foreign companies, Carbon Brief says this is a feature of the country’s privatised energy sector.

For example, 40% of North Sea oil and gas licences are also owned by foreign investors.

Additionally, regardless of the windfarms’ owners, their presence on the electricity grid is helping to protect consumers from high fossil-fuel prices.

In 2025, windfarms cut wholesale power prices by a third, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank.

The full list of 45 claims and Carbon Brief’s assessment of them can be accessed via its full factcheck of Reform UK’s climate and energy claims.

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