Net Zero News – Late July 2025
Estimated reading time 3 minutes
Although businesses have more clarity about the direction of environmental policymaking in the UK, most private sector leaders remain unconvinced that the Labour-led Government can deliver its growth-first mission while achieving net-zero.
This is a headline finding from the BSI Net Zero Barometer research, which covered 1,000 professionals.
Half of the businesses represented in the survey feel the Government’s net-zero 2050 target is unreachable. However, uncertainty over government transition policy fell this year, from 42% to 32%. Almost two-thirds (64%) of those businesses surveyed remain committed to their own net-zero target by 2050 or sooner.
China and the EU have pledged to publish new decarbonisation plans ahead of this year’s UN-convened climate conference, including ‘just transition’ measures to protect workers and communities.
World leaders from both geographies met in Beijing this week to mark 50 years since the establishment of their formal diplomatic relations.
Their respective and collective plans for the COP30 climate summit in Brazil this November was a key focus, and they agreed upon a strong statement of intention on collaboration and multilateralism – which many commentators had hoped for following the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and its axing of public climate funding for the UN.
Most Brits are struggling to engage with plans to decarbonise energy and infrastructure, because they understand neither the climate science behind net-zero nor the likely impacts on their daily lives.
This apathy towards the net-zero transition has been tracked in a survey of more than 1,500 UK-based adults, conducted by Keele University and Copper Consultancy.
Almost one in four (24%) of those surveyed admitted to having no understanding of net-zero. Nearly half (47%) struggle to understand what the transition will mean for them.
