Net Zero by 2050 law loses majority support
Britain believes in climate science, but is becoming increasingly ambivalent about net zero
Stephen Fisher, 22nd September 2026
Ever since Theresa May first proposed to make Britain the first major country with a legally binding net zero target, Deltapoll has asked representative samples of adults in Britain the following question.
“Reducing UK greenhouse-gas emissions to net-zero involves heavily cutting the use of fossil fuels and finding ways of taking any remaining greenhouse-gas emissions out of the atmosphere. Do you approve or disapprove of the law to require the government to reduce UK greenhouse-gas emissions to net-zero by 2050?”
The responses in Table 1 show around 60% approval for the net zero law every year from 2019 to 2023 but then a trend downwards to 54% in 2024, 52% in 2025 and just 46% approval this summer. That is the first and only time in eight years that less than a majority have approved of the net zero by 2050 law according to this measure.
Table 1. Approval of the Net Zero by 2050 Law
| Net zero 2050 law: | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
| % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | |
| Strongly approve | 28 | 27 | 26 | 24 | 22 | 19 | 19 | 15 |
| Approve | 32 | 38 | 37 | 32 | 37 | 35 | 33 | 31 |
| TOTAL APPROVE | 60 | 65 | 63 | 56 | 59 | 54 | 52 | 46 |
| Neither approve nor disapprove | 22 | 22 | 22 | 26 | 24 | 28 | 25 | 28 |
| TOTAL DISAPPROVE | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 11 | 11 | 18 | 19 |
| Disapprove | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 10 |
| Strongly disapprove | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 9 |
| Don’t know | 10 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| (N) | (2016) | (1545) | (1560) | (1550) | (1556) | (1383) | (1978) | (2032) |
Source: Deltapoll, June 2019, March 2020, Nov 2021, 13-14 April 2022, 28-31 July 2023, 14-17 June 2024, 21-24 March 2025, 21-24 August 2026.
Last week a report from the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee of MPs claimed that the “term net zero has lost much of its significant positive association” and recommended that the Department should drop ‘net zero’ from its name.
The drop in approval for the net zero law since last year was not, however, matched by a corresponding rise in the number of people against the net zero law. Disapproval was up by just 1 percentage point. Instead, the share of people saying that they “don’t know” what they think or that they “neither approve nor disapprove” have risen by 3 percentage points each. Rather than more hostile to net zero, Britain has become more ambivalent.
This year’s survey, conducted in late August, came shortly after a series of heatwaves and during the hottest summer on record for the UK. The Met Office said that the “season’s mean temperature was made around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change.” Perhaps that led to more people believing in climate science, making the increasing ambivalence to net zero all the more surprising?
To see if that happened, Deltapoll also asked,
“Which one of the following best describes your view on climate change?
- Climate change is happening and this is mostly due to actions of humans
- The planet is getting warmer but this is mostly due to natural forces rather than the actions of humans
- The planet is not getting warmer
- Don’t know”
The number of people acknowledging the key points of climate science — that climate change is happening and is mostly due to human action — is, at 60%, essentially at the same level, 61%, as it was in 2019. There has been a tiny rise, from 24% in 2019 to 28% this year, in the number that say, “the planet is getting warmer but this is mostly due to natural forces rather than the actions of humans.” But there were slight declines, from 5% to 4%, in the number denying the planet is getting warmer, and from 9% to 7% in the number of “don’t know” responses. Beliefs about global warming trends have barely changed since 2019 despite the increasingly visible evidence in British weather.
As well as being remarkably stable, beliefs about climate change are surprisingly weakly related to approval of the net zero law. That is not new. Even back in 2019 I wrote for Deltapoll about how the weak relationship between climate change beliefs and net zero approval posed a risk for the long-run support for the policy. That relationship is even weaker now, as can be seen in Table 2. Whereas in in 2019, only 47% of people both believed global warming was mainly due to humans and also approved of the net zero law, the corresponding figure is just 35% now. Little more than a third of people in Britain both support net zero and the scientific basis for net zero.
Table 2. Approval of the Net-Zero 2050 Law and Beliefs in Climate Science, 2019 and 2026
| 2019
% |
2026
% |
Change | |
| Approves of net-zero 2050 and believes climate change mostly human | 47 | 35 | -12 |
| Does not approve of net-zero 2050, but believes climate change mostly human | 14 | 25 | +11 |
| Approves of net-zero 2050, but does not believe climate change mostly human | 13 | 10 | -3 |
| Neither approves of net-zero 2050 nor believes climate change mostly human | 26 | 30 | +4 |
Source: Deltapoll, June 2019 and 21-24 August 2026.
In 2019 I thought that there was a particular risk of support for net zero collapsing among those who strangely approved of net zero even though they were not convinced of climate science. But there has been only a slight decline, from 13% in 2019 to 10% now, in the number who approve of the net zero law despite not believing that global warming has been mostly due to human action.
Instead, most of the decline in net zero approval since 2019 has been among those who believe in climate science, assuming they are mainly the same people who believed in climate science in 2019.
The sources of declining approval for net zero are hard to pin down, but, as I discussed last year, the partisan patterns in the data suggest that Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch play a role. There continues to be majority approval for the net zero law among those who would vote Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green if there were an election soon. But approval for net zero in this year’s Deltapoll survey is down to 39% among Conservative supporters and 31% among Reform UK voters.
However, despite the Conservatives’ pledge to scrap net zero, Deltapoll found that more Conservative supporters approve of the net zero law than disapprove. Also, despite Reform UK politicians frequently referring to net zero as “net stupid zero”, disapproval of the net zero law was, at 35%, still well short of a majority of those who say they would vote for the party.
Stephen Fisher is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Oxford.
Author: Stephen Fisher