An anti-net zero lobby group with ties to the Conservative Party held an event in the United States to raise funds for its pro-fossil fuel agenda, DeSmog can report. 

Net Zero Watch (NZW), which campaigns against net zero targets and renewable energy, put on the evening panel on “Net Zero and Freedom” in New York on Thursday (February 19), where speakers attacked the UK’s climate targets and praised President Donald Trump’s energy policies. 

They also appealed to the U.S. audience for “financial support”, and claimed partial credit for the Conservatives’ net zero U-turn. 

This is the latest example of climate deniers working across the Atlantic. DeSmog has previously reported on how U.S. groups close to President Trump are building ties with allies in Europe to push their anti-green agenda.

Net Zero Watch is the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a London-based think tank founded by Tory peer Nigel Lawson, which has described CO2 emissions as a “benefit to the planet”, and campaigns for new fossil fuel extraction in the UK. 

The event last week, attended by DeSmog, was held at the swanky Penn Club in midtown Manhattan, and appears to be the group’s first to take place in the United States since its rebrand in 2021. 

It was hosted by the American Friends of the GWPF, a U.S. group which has received funding from oil interests, and donated large sums to its UK affiliate.  

“It has been clear for many years that Net Zero Watch has been acting against the best interests of the British households and businesses by promoting climate change denial,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment at the London School of Economics. 

“But this shows that is now part of a campaign to make the UK more dependent on fossil fuel markets that are controlled by the United States, the world’s biggest producer of both oil and natural gas.”

The burning of fossil fuels makes up the vast majority of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions — and climate scientists warn a rapid phaseout is essential to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change. 

‘Things Are Great’

Drinks and canapés were circulated at the New York event, alongside a selection of Net Zero Watch policy papers. The group’s director Andrew Montford, GWPF advisor and former energy editor John Constable, and Steve Baker, a former Brexit minister and influential Tory backbench MP, all spoke at the event, which was attended by around 30 older men in suits. 

Baker, who lost his seat as an MP in 2024, was a director of the GWPF director between July 2021 and September 2022. He also ran the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, an anti-net zero caucus made up of backbench Conservative MPs which worked closely with the GWPF. 

In Montford’s remarks, he described net zero in the UK as a cautionary tale for the U.S., and praised Trump’s energy policies. Since his November 2024 re-election, Trump has slashed funding for climate research, dismantled support for wind and solar, and focused on “unleashing” oil and gas production. 

“Things are great here at the moment,” Montford said. “[U.S. Energy Secretary] Chris Wright’s doing a great job, and President Trump is sort of leading you in the right direction on energy.” 

Montford also appealed to the U.S. audience for funding. He said: “One of the reasons I’m here is that is to ask for if people can help us financially.” He described NZW as “a two-man team plus a lot of associates, but we punch well above our weight”. 

American Friends

The NZW event was hosted by Francis Menton, a New York-based retired lawyer who criticises climate policy on his blog Manhattan Contrarian. 

He opened the event by welcoming Trump’s recent scrapping of the 2009 “endangerment finding” — the U.S. government’s official policy that deemed greenhouse gases damaging to health and the environment. Menton said he and “a handful of people” had pursued this reversal for ten years. 

Menton is president and board member of the American Friends of GWPF, which has received significant funding from oil interests. 

In 2022, The Guardian revealed that American Friends of the GWPF had channeled more than $860,000 to the UK affiliate between 2018 and 2020, amounting to 45 percent of its funding for this period. 

This included money from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, a U.S. oil dynasty with millions invested in ExxonMobil and Chevron, and from Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch Industries oil family. 

Menton is a member of the CO2 Coalition, a U.S. group which describes CO2 as “plant food” and denies the link between emissions and global warming. The group received $662,000 from charities funded by the Koch Industries oil dynasty between 1997 and 2017.

The GWPF ended its formal ownership of NZW in 2024 after a Charity Commission review, but the groups continue to support each others’ work. 

The NZW website’s “support us” page says “readers in the USA may prefer to give to the American Friends of the GWPF.” 

Net Zero U-Turn

The U.S. event comes as UK climate policy is under renewed attack from Trump ally Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has pledged to scrap net zero, end support for renewable energy, and back new oil, gas and coal power. Reform is currently leading the polls at around 29 percent.

It is also being opposed by the Conservative Party, which under Kemi Badenoch has dropped its previous support for climate action, calling the UK’s 2050 net zero target “impossible” and pledging to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act. 

At the NZW event, Baker welcomed this development. He called net zero a “policy disaster which it seems likely will be repealed by the next centre-right government”, adding: “Kemi Badenoch the Conservative leader is committed to that, and the Reform party has also made similar commitments.”

During the Q&A, DeSmog asked if the panel was advising Reform UK. Baker replied that he was not, but took partial credit for Badenoch’s turn against net zero. 

He said: “No, I’ve said very plainly I won’t be doing so. But I’m pleased that Kemi has adopted the policy and certainly helped her and Claire Coutinho adopt it. I’m very clear that net zero is inimical to human freedom and our prosperity.”

As DeSmog has reported, Tory shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho recently endorsed three policy papers attacking climate policies, all produced by writers and organisations with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Two of the reports were by authors who have written for GWPF and NZW. 

Last week Coutinho appeared in a NZW social media video criticising the UK’s clean power agenda, in which she claimed that net zero would make Brits “poorer”. 

The claim, widely used by climate science deniers, is rejected by experts. In July 2025, the UK’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that reaching net zero is much more affordable than previously thought — and far less expensive than unchecked climate change. 

The Conservative Party, Net Zero Watch, GWPF and Steve Baker were all contacted for comment.