Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank that is all about

achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I'm Joe Tecklo, senior political advisor at Green

Alliance. In 2021, the UK hosted COP26, the climate conference in Glasgow and published a net zero

strategy. But in 2022, with inflation at a 30-year high, gas prices six times higher than that of a year earlier,

and the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis is at the top of the political agenda.

Some voices are calling for more norsee oil and gas production, others are calling for fracking.

There is even now a public campaign to scrap Net Zero,

led by some of the architects of Brexit. And in Parliament, a Net Zero scrutiny group has been set up.

But there is also significant pushback from people supportive of Net Zero. The Conservative

Environment Network group of MPs makes up around half of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister just this week

is written in the Telegraph backing Net Zero and stating it is the solution to the current energy

crisis ahead of the government's energy independent strategy. And there is now a Net Zero support group

to act as a counterweight to sceptical voices. On the podcast today, I'll be joined by the chair of

that group, Chris Skidmore.

He is the Conservative MP for Kingswood and the former energy minister who signed Net Zero into law.

Net Zero as a policy framework pretty much is the bare minimum that we could be doing

to try to decarbonise society with a hope of sticking on the

1.5 degrees of global warming is set out in the Paris Agreement. But that aside, it's, you know,

trying to come up with an organisation that would then really try to highlight the benefits of net

zero. And this should be a cost-benefit analysis. And very few people are really getting up

on saying, well, actually, what are the benefits we're already seeing about net zero? Because it has

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