Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho has endorsed two new anti-climate reports that have been rejected by experts and government bodies.

On 12 January, Coutinho launched a report by energy consultancy Watt-Logic which claimed that increasing renewable energy capacity in the UK will heighten the risk of blackouts – a claim rejected by the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO), which helps to plan and manage the country’s energy network.

The Department of Energy and Net Zero (DESNZ) called the report “nonsense scaremongering”, while energy expert Jess Ralston pointed out that “The recent major challenges to the UK’s energy supply have been from the volatility of gas”.

Watt-Logic, run by Kathryn Porter, advises the oil and gas industry. Porter claims to work for “businesses with projects across the electricity, gas and oil industries”, including “clients with conventional energy assets including gas-fired power stations, gas storage, upstream oil and gas production and [Liquified Natural Gas]”.

She has also authored reports for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group. The GWPF has stated that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.

On the same day, Coutinho backed a separate report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which claimed cutting UK emissions to net zero by 2050 could cost over £9 trillion – a figure 90 times that estimated by the independent Climate Change Committee’s (CCC).

Energy and climate expert Simon Evans, deputy editor of the publication Carbon Brief, called the IEA report “absolutely shameless” for portraying the alternative scenario – an energy system powered by fossil fuels – as comparatively cost-free.

The IEA’s estimate for the cost of net zero also factored in the damage caused by climate emissions – despite the fact that a polluting energy system will result in far greater climate damages.

In reality, the CCC has stated that achieving net zero will require 0.2 percent of GDP per year from 2025 to 2050, with the majority of this investment coming from the private sector “as long as the right incentives are in place.”

The IEA report was written by David Turver, a retired business consultant turned blogger who writes critical articles about clean energy policies. Turver seemingly has little prior experience or qualifications in energy policy or climate science, according to his LinkedIn biography.

Like Porter, he also has ties to the GWPF. In July 2024, he wrote a report for Net Zero Watch, the GWPF’s campaigning arm, accusing the “scandalous” CCC of “misleading Parliament” while attacking its “absurd” financial models.

As revealed by DeSmog, the IEA has historically received extensive funding from the fossil fuel industry – including from oil majors Shell and BP. The group is part of the Tufton Street network – an orchestrated alliance of radical right-wing groups based in Westminster that lobby to dismantle state services and privatise public bodies.

It is run by former Conservative peer David Frost, a director of Net Zero Watch, which along with the GWPF is based in 55 Tufton Street.

Lily Rose Ellis, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Last time the government implemented Tufton Street’s corporate lobbying as national policy back in 2022, Liz Truss’s mini-budget crashed the economy. Whatever the current government’s challenges, they’re unlikely to be desperate enough to take the IEA’s advice.”

Over the past year, the Conservatives – under pressure from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – have deserted their previous support for climate action, with party leader Kemi Badenoch calling net zero “impossible” and pledging to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act.

The party has received extensive donations from climate science deniers and fossil fuel interests. 

The Conservative Party, the IEA, Turver, and Porter were approached for comment.

Climate ‘Sceptic’ Authors

As DeSmog revealed in July 2023, Porter has written blogs that contradict basic climate science. In a 2017 post, she wrote that “climate models overstate global warming”. In fact, climate models have accurately predicted global temperature rises, with observed warming reflecting scientific forecasts.

She also publicly opposes climate policies. In a post on X in January 2025, Porter attacked what she called an “excessive focus on CO2” in energy policy, and in February she suggested the UK’s landmark Climate Change Act should be repealed.

Turver writes a newsletter offering “fundamental analysis of energy policy and net zero”. He has claimed that climate science is “just junk ideology given a fig leaf of respectability by academics and institutions who have their noses in the trough.” 

Turver has also said that Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband “and his supporters are among the most dangerous people in Britain. Net zero is killing the economy.”

In reality, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK’s net zero economy grew by 10 percent in 2024, employing almost a million people in full-time jobs with an average wage of £43,000 – £5,600 higher than the national average.

In another X post, Turver said: “Ed Miliband, when will you end your obsession with net zero and get coal back on the grid?” Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that coal power plants still produced a fifth of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Last January, Coutinho called for Turver and Porter to vet government energy policy. In May, Lord Offord of Garvel, then Coutinho’s shadow energy minister, helped to launch a report by Porter in Parliament on the supposed “true cost of net zero”. Offord defected to Reform UK last month.

Questionable Claims

Coutinho, quoted in The Telegraph about Kathryn Porter’s latest report, said that it “lays out in expert detail how Britain’s net zero plans are taking us down a path of economic ruin. If ministers were truly interested in making Britain rich again, they would ditch their green ideology and take her report on board.”

Coutinho also told The Express the report means “we need to build more gas plants”, and provided a quote for the IEA’s press release which accompanied Turver’s report, saying: “It beggars belief that none of our ‘independent’ energy bodies can publish an accurate figure for what net zero is going to cost this country.”

However, the accuracy of the two reports has been rejected by experts.

A spokesperson for NESO, the independent body which manages the UK energy supply, said of Watt-Logic’s report: “Great Britain has one of the most secure energy systems in the world, operating with an outstanding track record of reliability, and we simply do not recognise the figures or claims presented in this report.

“We robustly test tens of thousands of worst-case scenarios, and our engineers are confident Britain’s grid will continue to operate safely and securely as more renewables connect to the network in the years ahead.”

Jess Ralston, head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) think tank said: “There have been many, many claims in the past couple of decades that blackouts are imminent because of renewables, but even as the UK keeps on breaking clean power records, we’re yet to see one that’s related to the level of renewables on the grid.

“NESO has many tools at its disposal to manage supply and demand and routinely does so, and has confirmed that with increasing clean power the UK will retain our ‘world-class reliability standards’.

“The recent major challenges to the UK’s energy supply have been from the volatility of gas, and every turn of a wind turbine means we need less gas to power our homes. With the North Sea running out of gas whether or not more drilling occurs, a continued reliance on gas power stations means British homes are increasingly dependent on foreign supplies and actors like Putin that control them.”

A DESNZ spokesperson added that Porter’s report was “nonsense scaremongering”.

They added: “Gas will continue to play a key role in our energy system as we transition to clean, more secure, homegrown energy. NESO has also been clear the faster we decarbonise, the more secure we are.

“That’s why we are also delivering the biggest upgrade to Great Britain’s electricity network in decades to deliver clean power by 2030 and beyond.”

Posting on Bluesky in relation to the IEA’s “cost of net zero” report, Simon Evans pointed out that NESO has estimated a “holistic transition” away from fossil fuels is the “cheapest option” when you take account the economic damage caused by climate change.

Evans also pointed out that the IEA’s report mistakenly assumes “free fossil fuel energy, free petrol cars, free gas boilers, [and] free gas power plants.”

ECIU’s Jess Ralston added: “Nobody has a crystal ball on costs of fossil fuels, but history tells us that oil and gas prices are volatile and at the mercy of actors like Putin.

“The recent gas crisis drove the UK to spend over £180 billion, and the Treasury and homeowners alike would struggle to afford a repeat in the event of a future conflict or price spikes.”