In response to a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request, Reform-run Kent County Council has confirmed it’s on track to achieve Net Zero ‘cost neutrality’ by 2035. As there could be millions of years of civilisation in Kent after 2035, that’s a pretty good deal. This is especially true as national estimates predict Net Zero will be saving us £40bn per annum by 2050.

With the cost of renewable energy and electric vehicles and machinery regularly dropping in price, the future is looking bright for those who want clean air and a living planet. Or it is if we can convince politicians not to torch the climate for the sake of fossil fuel billionaires anyway.

Net Zero

As noted, the cost of renewables keep dropping. At the same time, we’re once again investing in carbon-free nuclear energy, and there are other interesting ideas in development which could provide even more options:

A U.S. startup, Quaise Energy, is making waves with a new drilling technology that melts rock with pure energy, using a “gyrotron” to vaporize rock at speeds 50 times faster than traditional drilling.https://t.co/5fGWRf77JM pic.twitter.com/2bgZRcL7pC

— Egg Geo (@GeoJayegg) September 24, 2025

There are still issues, though, with two of the biggest being:

Politicians like Donald Trump are dedicated to fossil fuel – either out of spite or because their donors want them to be.We keep finding ingenious new ways of wasting electricity, with the most recent being AI data centres – data centres which are primarily used to produce videos of SpongeBob SquarePants smoking weed (this may be an exaggeration, but still, you get the point).

While Reform and other politicians on the right have tried to turn the push for Net Zero into a ‘cost saving issue’, the reality is that not switching will cost us far more in the long run. Another reality is that the national and local governments know this, because they’ve crunched the numbers.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, Kent County Council told us:

In 2024-25, KCC spent £7,976,501 on fuel and utilities. Moving to Net Zero does not entirely negate fuel and utility costs – in some instances utility costs decrease (in the instance of EV charging at certain locations compared to the purchase of petrol and diesel) in other instances costs increase slightly (in the case of using electricity for heat pumps compared to using gas boilers – while heat pumps consume three times less than gas in terms of kWh, electricity is three times more expensive than gas). Despite this, as a package of measures, counting all savings and revenue generated from projects within the Net Zero 2030 plan against expenditure, LASER Energy estimated reaching ‘cost neutral’ position in 2035.

Despite the plan being on track, the Reform-run Council rescinded their climate emergency declaration in September. Council leader Linden Kemakaran said:

For so many years the opposition have been able to shut down anybody who had an opposing point of view. They got so used to shouting across the chamber, ‘climate change deniers, lunatics’.

Ironically, she then went on to make a statement which many would describe as ‘lunacy’:

We’re not saying there’s no such thing as climate change, what we are saying is we need to adapt to the changing climate.

Nature will do what nature does.

So Kent Council are going to “adapt” to failing global crops; to massively increased migration, and to England’s temperatures dropping to Scandinavian levels after the Gulf Stream collapses?

Adapt.

These Reform councillors can’t even adapt to being in the council, never mind to a never ending global catastrophe:

In just a single week, Reform UK’s Kent flagship council has seen the following:

DOGE failure. Raising Council Tax. Chris Hespe racism. Robert Ford suspension.

It’s time for @LeaderofKCC to consider her position.

(PS She spent the week campaigning in Wales) pic.twitter.com/lwDVNgeHJJ

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) October 14, 2025

The Net Zero stuff isn’t a quirk of Kent County Council; it’s coming from the very top of Reform:

The net zero scam is collapsing before our eyes.

Reform have fought for this for years.https://t.co/llgLZDLfph

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) July 12, 2025

The problem with all this is that it’s nonsense.

Net Zero misinfo

In a video titled You’ve been lied to about Net Zero, Simon Clark says that people create misinformation around Net Zero as follows:

So these are the five steps of the anti-net zero playbook. Inflate the costs, ignore the cost of business as usual, ignore the operational savings, ignore the co- benefits, and most egregiously, ignore the costs of inaction. Not getting to net zero is going to cost the world much, much more

Clark also highlights that when people target the ‘cost’ of switching to Net Zero, they ignore the costs of not switching:

the second step often is is to pretend that we can just carry on with business as usual and it won’t cost us anything. Let’s say we’re talking about decarbonising transport. And then people say, “Oh, but you know, an EV that’s going to cost like £40,000. You know, that’s a huge investment. That’s expensive, right?” You know, and you add that up over all of the cars in the in the country and you suddenly get a big scary number.

Again, let’s say we just carry on with petrol cars. Petrol cars aren’t free, right? Okay, maybe you own a petrol car now, so you don’t have to buy a new one, but that won’t last forever. So, that’s step two is you basically pretend that the existing system, which we’ve already built and paid for, can just carry on forever and won’t ever need replacing.

Power

The longer Reform are in power, the more their politicians are realising that Farage’s ideas don’t work in practice. This is why they went in promising to make efficiency savings and lower the cost of living but they’re now asking for pay rises and pushing tax rises.

Net Zero is another issue where Reform are talking nonsense, but it’s harder to make people see that than it is for something like failing local services or rising Council Tax. As such, if people don’t want to see the environment torched on the bonfire of Farage’s vanity, they need to speak up and get active.

Featured image via Jordy Schaap (Wikimedia) / Heute / Steven Penton (Wikimedia)

By Willem Moore

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