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.
The hard-right populist party is currently mired in a funding controversy and only has a handful of MPs, yet, until recently, it had been leading in national polls for more than a year.
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, Carbon Brief gathers together by topic and factchecks 45 false or misleading claims made by the party’s leadership relating to climate change, renewables and net-zero.
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.”
Sky News, February 2025
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 that 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.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Global temperatures are currently around 1.4C hotter than when the industrial era first began in 1850-1900, as shown in the figure below.
The IPCC says that this amount of warming is likely to have made Earth hotter than at any time in about 125,000 years.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that approximately 100% of this warming has been caused by humans.
There are also natural influences that can affect Earth’s climate on shorter timescales, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and small variations in the output of the sun. However, scientists have found that these have only a limited effect on the underlying trend of long-term global warming.
When looking at longer timescales of millions of years or more, Earth has experienced multiple ice ages interspersed with warmer periods.
These changes in climate were triggered by variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun, in combination with subtle fluctuations in the tilt and rotation of the planet, over tens of thousands of years. However, the resulting changes to CO2 levels in the atmosphere also played a role.
This should serve as a “cautionary example”, according to Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor, “because human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases push the Earth further out of the range of climate conditions that have characterised the past few million years”.
FALSE
Tice: “The idea that you can stop the power of the sun or volcanoes is simply ludicrous.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that humans have caused 100% of recent climate change.
Tice’s suggestion that the sun or volcanic eruptions are behind current warming is false.
As the video below explains, the sun and volcanic eruptions have little bearing on the long-term trend of global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.
MISLEADING
Farage: “All I do know is that man produces about 3% of the CO2 produced in the world every year and that it is nuts to call CO2 a poison.”
BBC Radio 5 Live, June 2024
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been for at least two million years, having spiked dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.
This surge in CO2 levels is entirely due to human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. While Farage is correct that, on an annual basis, humans only account for a few percent of all the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere, this is irrelevant.
The world’s land and ocean naturally release hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. However, the land and ocean also absorb hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 each year, meaning that – before the start of the fossil-fuel era – these flows were broadly in balance.
The recycling of CO2 through Earth’s natural systems is known as the “global carbon cycle”.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have disrupted Earth’s natural balance by releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The IPCC says that, because of humans, concentrations of CO2 “have increased at rates that have no precedent…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.
FALSE
Tice: “Many thousands of scientists fundamentally disagree about the need to [reach net-zero], or the pace to [achieve net-zero]…But they have been smeared and labelled. They can’t get any research grant funding.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Contrary to Tice’s claim, there are not “thousands” of scientists that disagree on the need for net-zero.
Tice is likely referring to a “world climate declaration” that was circulated on social media by climate sceptics in 2022, supposedly signed by “1,200 climate experts”. A closer look at the list of signatories revealed that less than 1% described themselves as climate scientists – and six of the people on the list were dead.
Reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the IPCC. The IPCC’s most recent set of reports involved 721 scientists in 90 countries.
All modelled pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, the ambition of the Paris Agreement, involve reaching net-zero emissions around the middle of the century.
This is reflected in the text of the Paris Agreement, which aims to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”.
FALSE
Tice: “The proof of my argument is one of the IPCC reports a few years ago that said even if you get to net-zero effectively tomorrow, it’ll make no difference to one of the key things people are most worried about, which is sea level rise, for somewhere between 200 years on the one hand and 1,000 years on the other hand.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Although it is true that sea level rise is set to worsen, even if countries reach net-zero, it is certainly not the case that making efforts to cut emissions will make “no difference”.
Tice is likely referring to the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C released in 2018.
It said with “high confidence” that human-caused global warming to date will “persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise”.
A more recent study, published in Nature Climate Change in 2025, found that following current climate policies would cause an extra 79cm of sea level rise by the year 2300.
However, reducing emissions in line with 1.5C would cut this additional sea level rise to 15cm.
Moreover, the best-available evidence shows that warming will more or less stop when the world reaches net-zero emissions. Even if some sea level rise continues, net-zero would still prevent a long list of other increasingly severe climate impacts from taking place.
FALSE
Tice: “The IPCC has just resiled from one of its core assumptions, which was the [RCP]8.5 scenario…One of the foundations of the IPCC’s very ethos in the last 20-30 years, they’ve just abandoned.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The “foundations” of the evidence on climate change, as well as the risk of “catastrophic” warming without stronger action, are unchanged by the recent shift on “RCP8.5”.
“RCP8.5” is one of a range of emissions scenarios that climate scientists have used when making projections about future climate change. It is a scenario of very high global emissions, imagining a future with large increases in coal use and no climate policies.
In May 2026, a new set of emissions scenarios were published, no longer including a scenario with emissions as high as those in RCP8.5 (or its successor, SSP5-8.5).
This moment was seized upon by a range of climate-sceptic and rightwing figures – including US president Donald Trump – who falsely claimed it as evidence that the IPCC had to “admit” that it was “wrong” about future climate change.
This is incorrect because it both misrepresents the meaning of the shift on RCP8.5 and because the set of emissions scenarios in question were not developed by the IPCC in the first place. Instead, they were put together by a group of climate modelling experts. (See Carbon Brief’s factcheck for more information.)
While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5 – partly as a result of limited climate policy success – they also show it is now “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”.
Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming. This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.
MISLEADING
Tice: “Cleaner air equals higher temperatures, not CO2.”
According to the IPCC, 100% of warming since the Industrial Revolution is due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2.
Tice cites a Daily Telegraph article with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.” He erroneously claims this as evidence that “we have been gaslit and lied to” about the causes of climate change.
In fact, as a Carbon Brief factcheck of that article notes, scientists say that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is simply “wrong”.
The claim is based on a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, which looks at how air pollution affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere and influences summer temperatures in Europe.
Scientists have long known that human-caused emissions of aerosols “mask” global warming, partly because they reflect or absorb sunlight. Curbing air pollution, therefore, removes some of this cooling effect.
Nevertheless, the lead author of the study in question is clear that greenhouse gas emissions remain the “most important factor” driving Europe’s extreme heat events, due to their role in global warming.
A recent attribution study by the World Weather Attribution service concluded that the June heatwave in Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Net-zero target
FALSE
Tice: “Net-zero will make zero difference to climate change.”
BBC Breakfast, June 2024
In fact, reaching net-zero emissions globally is the “only way” to stop climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At that point, when carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been cut substantially and any remaining emissions are balanced out by CO2-removal technology or tree-planting, then 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.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
It is completely false to argue that the UK is acting “unilaterally” to tackle climate change.
The UK has indeed 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 even aiming for “net-negative” emissions.
The UK is, therefore, not pursuing net-zero “unilaterally”. Indeed, if the UK abandoned its net-zero target, it would join the US and Iran as the only major emitters without one.
MISLEADING
Tice: “We’re responsible for 0.7, 0.8% of CO2 emissions.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The UK’s annual emissions, including emissions from fossil fuels and land-use changes, were roughly 0.7% of the global total in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. When only considering fossil-fuel combustion, the figure is 0.8%.
Yet, while the numbers Tice quotes are accurate, it is misleading to use them as a justification for abandoning climate policies.
Only six nations each produce more than 2% of the world’s annual emissions. In 1990, the UK was one of those rare countries, but it has roughly halved its share since then, largely due to renewable-energy expansion. Even today, it remains the world’s 22nd largest emitter.
As the chart below shows, more than a third of all greenhouse gases come from the roughly 180 nations that produce 1% or less of the world’s emissions. If none of them acted, the world would never stop climate change.
Finally, some analysts point out the UK’s “moral responsibility” to act on climate change, given its large historical contribution to current levels of global warming.
The UK, through its historical CO2 emissions, is responsible for around 3% of current warming. When emissions in other countries under the UK’s colonial rule are counted as well, its share grows to more than 5% of the global total.
FALSE
Tice: “[Net-zero is] killing our economy.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
Efforts to cut the UK’s emissions are not “killing the economy”. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that they are boosting the economy.
UK emissions in 2025 were 54% below 1990 levels, the baseline year for the nation’s climate goals. The UK economy has nearly doubled in size over the same period, as the chart below shows.
GDP has also continued to grow since the net-zero target was introduced in 2019.
A 2026 report from the CBI Economics – the consultancy arm of the Confederation for British Industry (CBI) – concluded:
“Net-zero is already one of the UK’s most productive and geographically distributed industrial sectors, generating high-value employment, driving supply chain activity, and anchoring the UK within one of the defining economic transformations of our era.”
The report concludes that the net-zero economy generated around £105bn in gross value added in 2025. It also supported 1.1m jobs across the country, with considerably higher wages than the UK average.
FALSE
Tice: “The cost of net-zero, which the Climate Change Committee admits is in the trillions of pounds, we don’t know how many trillions, who’s paying that? The British people.”
Bloomberg, May 2026
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that it would cost the UK a total of £108bn to reach net-zero by 2050, equivalent to 0.2% of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says this would be far cheaper than failing to act.
The idea that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds is false. Such claims invariably rely on analysis that exaggerates the capital cost of net-zero, while excluding both the benefits of cutting emissions and the costs of a system without net-zero policies.
One prominent recent example, promoted by Reform UK, relied on the assumption that gas boilers and petrol cars, for example, would cost nothing to buy and would have free fuel.
The idea that the CCC has “admitted” that net-zero will cost “trillions” may stem from a misinterpretation of CCC analysis from 2019, which estimated a net cost of £321bn.
Alternatively, Tice may be conflating this with another misinterpretation in the 2024 Reform UK manifesto, which falsely claimed that the cost of net-zero would be “£2tn or more”, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso).
In fact, Neso had estimated that the cost of a net-zero energy system would be “broadly the same” as a high-carbon alternative.
Since then, the CCC has calculated that the net cost of investments needed to reach economy-wide net-zero will be around £108bn out to 2050, or less than 0.2% of GDP. Not only are the up-front investment costs lower than originally thought, but, by the 2040s, there will likely be large operational savings, due to clean technologies being cheaper to run.
There are also benefits from reaching net-zero, such as avoiding climate damages from cutting emissions and shielding the UK from fossil fuel-driven energy price spikes.
The government, therefore, expects net-zero to deliver substantial economic value to the UK, when weighing both the costs and benefits of meeting the target. The government says meeting its climate target for 2040 would yield net benefits worth £865bn.
Similarly, other bodies, such as Neso and the OBR, find that net-zero is the “cheapest” option for the UK, when compared with failing to cut emissions.
Finally, contrary to Tice’s comments, the vast majority of the capital costs of reaching net-zero will not be borne by public funding from the “British people”. The CCC estimates that 65-90% of the capital required will come from the private sector.
FALSE
Tice: “Labour’s reckless net-zero fantasies are destroying hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs.”
Press Association, July 2025
The transition to a net-zero economy is expected to boost the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
In a “landmark moment”, as of 2024, there were more people employed in the UK clean-energy sector than the oil and gas industry for the first time, according to the Renewable Energy Association.
While jobs in some sectors are expected to decline in the coming years, there is currently no evidence that “hundreds of thousands” of jobs have been “destroyed” by the net-zero target.
The CCC says that there is a lack of “robust data” on whether UK climate policies have already driven job losses, but notes that “this is unlikely to be the case, as most decarbonisation has occurred in sectors where employment declined for other reasons”.
This can be seen in the employment figures for coal mining, steelmaking and oil and gas production, three industries that were mainstays of the UK economy.
As the chart below shows, all of these sectors employ fewer people today than they did in the past. But their major declines happened long before the net-zero target was set, resulting from a wide range of factors including coal being replaced by cheaper fuels, cyclical downturns in oil prices and competition with steel production overseas.