Public support for UK reaching net zero by 2050 is waning
The share of the UK public who say the country needs to reduce carbon emissions to net zero sooner than 2050 has nearly halved since 2021, according to a major new study.
29% of the public now say the UK should achieve net zero before the government's 2050 target - down from 54% in 2021, when this question was last asked.
The proportion who feel the UK either doesn't need to reach net zero by 2050 or shouldn't have a net zero target at all has risen from 9% to 26% over the same period.
But despite this declining sense of urgency, a significant majority (64%) still believe the government's target for net zero should be at least 2050, if not earlier.
The findings come in a new study carried out by the Policy Institute at King's College London, Ipsos and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations which updates several long-term trends in public opinion, as issues related to climate change have increasingly being drawn into "culture war" debates in the UK.
The research is based on a representative survey of 4,027 people aged 16+, carried out in August 2025 using the Ipsos UK online random probability KnowledgePanel - the most rigorous sampling method available. It finds:
- Between 2024 and 2025, support for low-traffic neighbourhoods, taxes on those who fly more, subsidies for electric vehicle purchases, and a tax on environmentally damaging foods all declined, with opposition to some of these measures now greater than support for them - a stark reversal of attitudes from just a few years earlier. Support tends to have fallen more amongst older people than younger people.
- 44% now say they would be more likely to vote for a political party committed to strong climate action, even if this led to higher energy costs and required greater investment - down from 52% in 2024. However, this is still higher than support for a party that wanted to slow down action against climate change (32%), and young people's preference for climate-focused parties has remained stable.
- The public are more inclined to see tension between climate change sceptics and believers (64%) than between Leave and Remain voters (52%), different generations (45%), or men and women (32%). Only tensions between supporters of different political parties (68%) and between immigrants and people born in the UK (86%) are felt to be greater by larger shares of the population. However, most people (68%) do not consider themselves to be either a climate change sceptic or a climate change activist.
- The vast majority of the public say they're at least fairly worried about climate change, even if the proportion who feel this way declined from 83% in 2021 to 72% in 2025.
- 2024 Reform UK voters stand out as the only political group without a majority in favour of achieving net zero by 2050 or sooner, the least likely to support a range of climate policies, and the only group where under half say they're worried about climate change.
The urgency of achieving net zero: views by age and politics
The belief the UK needs to achieve net zero sooner than 2050 is no longer the majority view among younger and middle-aged people. For example, in 2021, 59% of 16- to 34-year-olds felt the UK should achieve net zero sooner than 2050. Now 37% do.
However, older people have seen the sharpest increase in opposition to net zero targets: in 2021, 11% of those aged 55+ said either the UK does not need to hit its 2050 target or does not need a net zero target at all. This has since risen to 35% - more than double the share of 16- to 34-year-olds (16%) who feel the same.
But despite these shifts, majorities of all age groups still favour achieving net zero by 2050 or earlier.
And majorities of nearly all parties' 2024 voters - Greens (89%), Lib Dems (81%), Labour (79%) and Conservative (53%) - today support reaching net zero by 2050 or sooner, but Reform UK voters take a very different view, with just one in four (26%) backing this timeline.
Support for climate policies
Support has fallen for all four climate policies tracked since 2021:
Low-traffic neighbourhoods
38% of people now say they support LTNs - down from 43% in 2024 and 50% back in 2021. With this shift in views, opposition (37%) to LTNs now virtually matches support for them (38%).
When this trend began, there was a 17-point gap in support between the oldest (57%) and youngest (40%) surveyed. But as support has fallen across among older age groups (but stayed fairly constant among young people), this gap has narrowed, with around four in 10 of all age groups now backing the measure.
Support for LTNs is lowest among Reform UK voters, at 18% in 2025, down from 25% in 2024. Conservative voters are next least likely to back LTNs, with 31% supporting them in 2025.
Subsidies for electric vehicle purchases
34% of the public today support the government subsiding the purchase of electric vehicles, even if it might mean higher fuel duty - a five-point decline on 2024 (39%) and down 17 points on 2021 (51%), the high point in support for this measure. 2025 was the first time opposition (41%) was greater than support (34%) for such subsidies.
The decline in support has occurred across all age groups, but with the biggest drop among those aged 55+, where it fell from 50% in 2021 to 26% in 2025.
And 57% of 2024 Green voters support these subsidies, but atthe other end of the spectrum, just 10% of Reform UK voters support this policy.
Taxes on frequent flyers
52% now support a tax that increases as people fly more often - down from 62% in 2024, which is similar to when this trend began in 2021 (64%). Yet despite this decline, the public are still twice as likely to support (52%) rather than oppose (25%) such a tax.
The change in views has mostly been driven by older and middle-aged people, who were previously much more likely than the young to back this measure but have since seen their support decline.
In 2024, a tax on frequent flyers enjoyed majority support among voters for all major parties - but this changed in 2025, when support fell from 60% to 44% among Conservative voters and from 51% to 36% among Reform UK voters.
Environmental food taxes
Support for a tax that varies according to the negative environmental impact of different foods, meaning higher prices for red meat and dairy, declined from 46% in 2021 to 32% in 2025, with much of this fall occurring since 2024 (42%). Opposition (42%) now exceeds support for the first time.
An age divide has opened up on this issue, with support falling among all groups but most sharply among those aged 55+, from 47% in 2024 to 27% in 2025. 16- to 34-year-olds (38%) remain most supportive.
While Reform UK (14%) voters are least likely to back such a food tax, Green voters saw the biggest decline in support between 2024 and 2025, from 71% to 58%, even if they are still the only party with a majority who favour the policy.
Heat pumps
By 45% to 24%, the public are more supportive than opposed to the government encouraging homeowners to switch to heat pumps through measures like grants to cover some of the installation costs (asked for the first time in 2025). Support among 2024 Green Party voters (69%) is almost four times that of Reform UK voters (18%), while 16- to 34-year-olds are the only age group with majority (54%) support for this policy.
Political preferences
The share of people who say they would be more likely to vote for a party committed to strong climate action, even if this led to higher energy costs and required greater investment, has declined from 52% in 2024 to 44% today. However, this is still higher than the proportion favouring a party that would slow down climate action, which has risen from 26% to 32%.
Young people's preference for climate-focused parties has remained stable: half of 16- to 34-year-olds (52%) say they would prefer a party that takes strong action on climate change - virtually unchanged from 51% in 2024. Instead there has been a bigger decline in support among older people, from 52% of those aged 55+ in 2024 to 39% now.
Reform UK and Conservative voters have seen the biggest swings in support towards parties slowing down action on climate change. Among 2024 Conservative voters, 49% now favour a party that would slow action, compared with 39% in 2024. Among Reform UK voters, this figure is now 68% - up from 54%.
Voters for the Greens, LibDems and Labour have remained relatively consistent in their preference for a party that takes strong action on climate change.
Perceived social tensions over climate change
The public are more inclined to see tension between climate change sceptics and believers (64%) than between Leave and Remain voters (52%), different generations (45%), or men and women (32%). Of seven sets of opposing groups asked about, only two - supporters of different political parties (68%) and immigrants and people born in the UK (86%) - are more likely to be seen has having tense relations. However, most people (68%) don't consider themselves either a climate change activist (14% do, rising to 23% of 16-34s) or a climate change sceptic (9%).
Worry about climate change
In 2021 (83%) and 2022 (82%), just over eight in 10 people said they were at least fairly worried about climate change. By 2024 this had fallen to around three-quarters (77%) and by 2025 it had declined further, to around seven in 10 (72%).
Today Reform UK (48%) voters are the only political group without a majority who were worried about climate change. Among Conservative voters, who are next least likely to share this concern, 63% say they are worried.
Since 2021, all age groups have become less likely to say they are worried about climate change. However, since 2024 the proportion of older people who feel extremely or very worried about climate change has declined further (from 37% to 32%), while it has held relatively steady among young and middle-aged people.
Despite changing levels of climate concern, people in the UK (69%) are still more likely than those in the US (58%) to think climate change is caused by human activity
However, the UK public tend to overestimate how worried others are about climate change. While 36% say they are extremely or very worried, the average guess is that 45% of people feel this way.
Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King's College London, said:
"This research reveals a striking decline in the public's sense of urgency around climate action. The proportion who think we need to reach net zero sooner than 2050 has nearly halved since 2021, and support has fallen for every climate policy we've tracked over this period.
"But this doesn't represent a wholesale rejection of climate action. Nearly two-thirds of the public still support reaching net zero by 2050 or earlier, and majorities of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green voters all back this timeline. The public also remain twice as likely to support as oppose a tax on frequent flyers, and are more worried about climate change than Americans are.
"What's changed is the urgency people feel and their willingness to support policies that might affect their daily lives or finances. This shift has happened as climate policy has become increasingly caught up in wider culture war debates - to the extent that the public are now more likely to see tension between climate sceptics and believers than between Leave and Remain voters or different generations.
"This is also reflected in an emerging political divide on this issue: Reform UK voters stand apart from all other groups, with just a quarter supporting net zero by 2050 or earlier, and less than half saying they're worried about climate change at all. In many ways this is the key shift: previously all the major parties in the UK were broadly in favour of urgent action on climate change, but Reform have struck a much more sceptical tone, which has both provided a political home for sceptics and may have helped encourage that view among their supporters."
Gideon Skinner, Senior Director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said:
While the balance of opinion remains in favour of action on climate change, and most are worried about it, it is not seen as urgent a priority as it once was a few years ago, as other issues such as inflation, the economy, the NHS, and immigration have dominated the public's daily concerns. And this is reflected in support for individual climate polices too, especially where they involve harder trade-offs.
Climate change is also beginning to be seen as an emerging source of tension. Support tends to have fallen most among older people, while younger people have remained more steady in their political support for climate action, and Reform UK voters often have much more sceptical views on net zero than supporters of other parties. While this shouldn't be overstated - most people do not see themselves as a climate activist or a sceptic, and most party supporters except Reform still support net zero by 2050 - some gaps are widening, which means the need to engage with people's concerns is becoming more pressing.
Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE, Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) and environmental psychologist, said:
This new data shows the UK public are still worried about climate change and most want the UK to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 or sooner. But with the cost-of-living crisis still biting, climate concern and policy support has dropped - highlighting the importance of action to reduce costs of climate action to households. The signs of growing polarisation between voter groups and generations over climate reinforce the need for unifying narratives and policies that achieve improvements in quality of life which are valued universally.
Study details
Ipsos UK interviewed online a representative sample of 4,027 adults aged 16+ across the United Kingdom between 21 and 27 August 2025, following previous surveys of 4,201 people between 18-24 April 2024, 16,160 people between 27 October and 2 November 2022, and 5,665 people between 19 and 25 August 2021 (in 2021 some questions were only asked to randomised sub-groups of c700 people). This data has been collected by Ipsos' UK KnowledgePanel, an online random probability panel which provides gold standard insights into the UK population, by providing bigger sample sizes via the most rigorous research methods, including providing offline households with tablets and internet access, ensuring results represent all of society, not just those already engaged online. Data are weighted by age, gender, region, Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile, education, ethnicity and number of adults in the household in order to reflect the profile of the UK population. All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error.
