BELÉM — Keir Starmer delivered a speech at the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. His address occurred while opposition parties have focused on dismantling the country's climate and energy agenda.

Kemi Badenoch has made pledges to abandon the net zero target, boost drilling in the North Sea, and repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act. Badenoch has also vowed to scrap the windfall tax on oil and gas profits. Nigel Farage's Reform party has threatened to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The target for a committed investment of £28 billion in the green economy was halved. Despite this reduction, polling conducted for More in Common for the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit in May indicated that two-thirds of the public supported the country meeting its net zero target.

Ed Matthew, UK director of the E3G thinktank, said: "Starmer made the bold move to set a whole of government mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower." He added: "This was visionary." Matthew also stated: "But he was constrained by his former adviser Morgan McSweeney, who was concerned this mission would lead Labour voters to defect to Reform."

Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said: "Starmer's record of supporting Miliband's climate action is strong." Childs added: "He intervened in the spending review to ensure the warm homes plan was not cut further by the Treasury." He further said: "He insisted that the government's revised climate plan must be legally compliant." Childs also noted: "He has voiced support for green energy and jobs."

Fatih Birol, chief of the International Energy Agency, said in April that a moratorium on new oil and gas licensing made sense because new projects would not come online for years. Birol stated that any green light for projects already in the licensing system would make little difference to the UK's energy security. Meanwhile, investments in renewable energy reduced wholesale electricity prices by about a third last year, according to the ECIU thinktank, and electric car sales increased 60% in April.

Keir Starmer hosted 60 governments at an energy security conference in Westminster last year, where he declared that the UK was "going all out" for renewables.