One year on from Labour’s landslide general election victory a lot has changed. As well as Donald Trump’s election and the continuation of the dreadful wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, we’ve also seen the rise of climate change-denying Reform UK, the Conservative Party’s leader Kemi Badenoch claiming that net zero by 2050 is “impossible” and Labour losing 189 seats in the May 2025 English local council elections (winning its lowest proportion of seats in over 20 years).
Alongside this, 2024 was confirmed as the warmest year ever on record. The World Meteorological Organization reported that there’s a 70% chance the average global temperature will be above the 1.5 degrees threshold over the next 5 years. And scientists have warned that children born in 2020 will face “unprecedented exposure” to extreme weather events in the future, including heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
On the other hand, there are signs that China’s emissions may have peaked as a result of its clean power investments, electric vehicles (EVs) are set to be cheaper than petrol and diesel vehicles, and the net zero economy (businesses engaged in reducing carbon emissions) in the UK is fast outpacing growth in other sectors, growing at triple the rate of the rest of the economy.
Properly addressing the climate and nature emergencies isn’t, in our view, an optional choice for this government or future governments. It’s morally necessary for the wellbeing of everybody, but particularly the poorest in societies across the planet and future generations. It’s required for the UK’s national security as environmental degradation can lead to increased conflict and destabilise food production and trade. And it’s economically necessary, with the Office for Budget Responsibility warning that “delaying decisive action to tackle carbon emissions by ten years could double the overall cost”.
But for the Labour Party it’s also politically necessary. Labour could haemorrhage votes to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens if it fails on this agenda. By acting on climate and nature, it can gain votes and stop the march of Reform UK – through ensuring people live in warm homes with affordable energy, reducing air pollution and its costs to the NHS, and creating jobs and economic growth by being at the forefront of the global green technology revolution rather than a laggard.
This joint Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace assessment of the government’s progress over the past year follows on from our joint scoring of the 4 main political parties' commitments heading into the 2024 general election. We assess progress in 4 areas: climate and energy, nature and the environment, homes and transport, and justice and democracy.
Climate and energy
The government has hit the ground running with its mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. It rapidly updated its National Planning Policy Framework, removing the de-facto ban on onshore wind and tilting the planning system in favour of renewables. It approved a large number of solar farms (whereas the previous government had been sitting on decisions) and it achieved record results in AR6, its annual renewable energy auction. It’s working with Ofgem to speed up grid connections and is pressing ahead with grid expansion, meaning more renewable energy can be fed into the energy system.
It's also kept its promise to stop granting new licences for offshore oil and gas – the extraction of which would do nothing for energy security or bills – although it’s yet to make a decision on the giant Rosebank oil field (it hasn’t banned onshore oil and gas). And it’s set up Great British Energy with £8.3 billion to invest. At the 2024 international climate talks in Baku (COP29), the Prime Minister also personally announced that the UK would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 81% by 2035 from 1990 levels.
However, alongside some good progress, the government has also committed large sums of money to nuclear power (£20 billion), Carbon Capture and Storage (£9.4 billion) and roads (£24 billion), while significantly under-funding measures such as insulation, heat pumps, buses and active travel which can cut energy demand and carbon emissions much more swiftly and cheaply.
By 29 October this year, the government is legally obliged to publish a new climate plan, with the previous government’s plan declared illegal by the High Court following challenges by Friends of the Earth, Client Earth and the Good Law Project. This plan needs to demonstrate in detail how the government will meet Climate Change Act carbon budgets and its international pledges. It needs to provide clarity on the delivery role of English mayors and local authorities, both of which should be given a statutory duty to deliver on climate and nature goals in the forthcoming English Devolution Bill. It will also need to make the government’s future commitment to international climate finance clear.
Overall the government has shown ambition and energy in this area, but much remains to be done if climate and electricity decarbonisation goals are to be met and energy bills lowered.
Our verdict: reasons to be cheerful.
Nature and environment
Progress in this area is significantly poorer than on climate. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor have repeatedly said nature protections are a block to growth without a shred of evidence. And their planning reforms are set to be a significant threat to nature in England, including to protected habitats such as chalk streams and ancient woodlands and to species such as bats, newts and water voles.
It's entirely possible for the government to sit down with green groups and amend planning rules in a way that benefits nature and speeds up planning. Ultimately it’s the government’s reluctance to genuinely engage that has been the real obstacle to progress and which has overshadowed some of the positive moves it’s made.
These positive moves include curbing water companies’ poor behaviour, refusing an application to continue the use of bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides, authorising the first legal release of beavers, setting up a UK-wide tree planting taskforce and announcing the first of 3 new national forests, increasing the size of peat moorlands that are protected from burning and setting up a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in England to reduce plastic pollution.
Steps have also been taken to protect some of our domestic oceans. The Environment Secretary recently announced plans to ban bottom trawling in 41 of England’s marine protected areas (MPAs). Bottom trawling in a protected area is like bulldozering through a national park – it shouldn’t be allowed in any of our MPAs, nor should other forms of destructive fishing. But despite pre-election commitments, the government is yet to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. And unless it introduces legislation very soon, the UK is extremely unlikely to be part of the first cohort of countries required to bring the treaty into force – potentially also risking a seat at the inaugural Ocean COP.
Global deforestation is one of the greatest threats to wildlife, as well as to climate change. Yet like its predecessor, this government has dragged its feet on introducing due diligence legislation that would require UK companies to ensure they and their supply chains don’t contribute to deforestation. According to Global Witness, more than a thousand hectares of forest are being lost each month as a result of UK imports of cattle products, soy, oil palm, cocoa, coffee and rubber.
Overall it appears the government has less understanding of the need to tackle the nature emergency than it does the climate emergency. While it’s increased spending on nature to £7 billion over the spending review period, this falls far short of what’s needed. It will need to significantly up its game in this parliament if it’s to be on track for its 2030 nature targets and if it’s to contribute to global nature recovery aims. Britain is a nature-loving country and trampling nature will harm Labour’s future electoral success.
Our verdict: cause for concern.
Homes and transport
The energy crisis revealed just how exposed UK households are to global gas price shocks. Due to poor insulation, many households face unaffordable bills and have significantly cut back on heating, with a detriment to their health. The scale of energy debt is now at record levels. As Labour prepared for the general election, it scaled down its investment promise of £6 billion a year for home insulation and heat pumps to £13.2 billion over the lifetime of the parliament (5 years), which the Chancellor confirmed at the 2025 spending review.
But to its credit, it's at least said it will require social and private-rented homes to be upgraded to EPC C by 2030. In our view a higher level of investment is still needed, but the Warm Homes Plan, expected in the autumn, will better reveal what the government can achieve through spending, regulation and incentives.
Regarding transport, the government has broadly stuck with its promise to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, although the Climate Change Committee has said the adjustments it’s made could lead to higher emissions and, if so, further adjustments will be required. It’s also pressing ahead with promises on the regulation of buses – although more revenue finance than promised in the spending review (£750 million a year) is needed if services are to be restored to 2010 levels – and it’s renationalising the railways, both of which should lead to better services.
It appears that with a recent flurry of announcements on public transport capital investments, the government is making a welcome and clear break from past governments which prioritised spending on new roads. We’ll know more when the third Road Investment Strategy is published.
But it’s approved airport expansion at Luton and London City while championing expansion at Heathrow and Gatwick in the interests of growth. It’s seemingly relying on a fantasy that sustainable aviation fuels will magic away the climate challenge. Transport is the largest contributor to UK climate emissions and as aviation grows, much greater – and potentially impossible – reductions from electrification and modal shift to public transport and active travel are required if legally binding carbon targets are to be met.
Overall, transport emissions are finally on a downward trajectory thanks to EVs, but an obsession with aviation expansion to boost growth – despite evidence that air travel results in more money leaving the country than coming into it – means that the Department for Transport may still have a problem in meeting climate goals. An apparent shift away from the obsession with road building is very welcome though.
Decarbonising homes through fitting heat pumps and insulation requires significant government investment, particularly as the government shied away from boiler bans in its general election manifesto. If you withdraw the stick it’s likely the carrot will need to be bigger.
Our verdict: glimmers of hope, perhaps.
Justice and democracy
Climate change and broader environmental degradation is a significant injustice. It’s the wealthy that have predominantly caused the problem but the poorest in the UK and globally who face the biggest consequences. Investing in carbon-reduction measures and adapting to the inevitable increase in extreme weather events will require public money. Surely the polluters should foot the bill as this is significantly better than putting additional costs on hard-pressed families or under-investing?
The “polluter pays principle” isn’t new. It was included in the declaration issued by the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, 1972 and has been embedded in EU environmental policy and law since 1975. In the UK it’s enshrined in the Environment Act 2021.
The government did increase the Energy Profits Levy on North Sea oil and gas companies from 35% to 38% but it could increase this further. And so far it’s resisted calls to introduce higher costs for polluters such as very frequent flyers. The New Economics Foundation has identified a package of policy measures that could raise up to £6 billion per year in tax revenues and deliver up to a 28% reduction in aviation CO2 emissions by 2030, without any net change to the price of a UK resident’s first short-haul flight of the year. It’s also refused to introduce wealth taxes. Patriotic Millionaires has identified that 10 tax reforms and closed loopholes could raise over £60 billion in a single year.
Under-investment in climate mitigation and adaptation (the UK’s national adaptation plan has had a scathing review from the Climate Change Committee), including the UK’s fair share of international climate finance, is a grave injustice to the poorest in society and future generations – an injustice compounded by the government slashing the overseas aid budget to spend on defence. There’s no shortage of money, just apparently a government reluctance to make polluters and the wealthy pay.
It's therefore not surprising that over recent years there’s been an increase in public protest, including direct action. The last government brought in draconian laws to stifle protest and hence democracy, which led international watchdog Civicus to bracket the UK with countries like far-right Hungary for the obstruction of freedom to protest.
Over the past year, we’ve seen the arrests of organisers of non-violent Palestine protests against the UK government’s continued sale of weapons to Israel despite the enormous loss of civilian life, massive infrastructure damage and huge environmental degradation in Gaza, a police raid on a Quaker meeting house and a new Crime and Policing Bill which further criminalises protest. We’ve also seen some of the unjust sentences of climate activists reduced after a legal appeal which both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace supported.
The new laws have also provided police with extraordinary powers and led to hundreds of arrests. Thankfully, Liberty has won an important legal case against the government, with the Court of Appeal declaring the Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023 illegal. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and others will continue to fight for the right to protest, and in our view it’s shameful that the new government has embraced the last government’s anti-democratic protest laws rather than repealing them.
Overall, on justice and democracy the government’s performance has been poor to say the least.
Our verdict: poor.
Conclusion
Judging a new government after a year is akin to judging a football team halfway through the first half. It isn’t entirely fair. There have been a few bright moments, particularly on energy, public transport and EVs. But there are also very worrying signs, for example on planning laws, airport expansion, under-investment in some areas coupled with a reluctance to properly embrace the polluter pays principle, and an expansion of anti-democratic protest laws.
Our judgement overall is as follows:
Good early progress on climate and noteworthy investments in public transport and EVs are signs for optimism, but the government must do better across all areas, particularly justice and democracy.
A lot needs to be done if Labour is to enter the next general election with solid green credentials and a demonstrable track record of addressing the injustices and dangers of the climate and nature emergencies.
The green economy is expanding at a rate 3 times faster than the overall UK economy. Climate solutions are better for bill payers, as renewable energy is cheaper, well-insulated homes can save hundreds of pounds a year and EVs are much cleaner and cheaper to run than petrol ones. Delivery on climate change and nature is a win:win for the planet, people, the economy and the cost-of-living crisis. There are some signs that the government understands this.
