“I don’t regret [the target],” he said. “I just — I regret, maybe, the way that we went about it.” His old boss May would “recognize the Conservative Party is under new management,” he added.
The party’s shift to disavow its old keynote green policy comes as it seeks to hammer Labour ministers over the government’s clean energy policy stall.
Labour is sprinting to decarbonize the power system so that it runs on 95 percent clean power by 2030, with the promise this will cut energy bills. The Conservatives say it will force up costs in pursuit of a “misguided ideology.”
Bowie — who was an energy minister until last summer’s general election — has distanced himself from other policies pursued by his former department, including dishing out billions of pounds in government subsidies to the Drax biomass plant.
“I don’t think anybody can defend the eye-watering amounts of money that were funneled to Drax over the period that we were in government, and that’s why we’re taking the position that it needs to end,” he said.
His party will face up to some “hard truths” under Badenoch’s leadership, he said. Bowie previously admitted he and other former Conservative ministers should have moved quicker to roll out mini-nuclear power projects and gone “further and faster” on home insulation.
The Tories face an uphill battle to win over the public — the party collapsed to its worst result in terms of seats at last year’s election, and is now behind the right-wing challenger outfit Reform UK, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.