Tories overstate net zero cost by nearly £500bn in apparent spreadsheet error

The Guardian9 October 2026, 06:00 UTCUnited Kingdom

Exclusive: Badenoch’s flagship conference policy document cites £957bn estimate, twice the total in climate advisers’ dataKemi Badenoch’s flagship party conference policy document overestimated the cost of net zero by nearly £500bn, seemingly after someone accidentally double-counted figures on a spreadsheet.The apparent error appears in a chapter on net zero in The Right Way, a 100-page policy document produced for the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Badenoch repeatedly used the phrase in her main speech. Continue reading...

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