LONDON — Andy Burnham jets off to the latest global COP climate summit early next week. The last time he went to this annual meeting of the world’s climate diplomats, he didn’t like what he saw. 

“I’m just back from two days at COP26 and officially worried about the state of the climate debate,” Burnham, then the mayor of Greater Manchester, wrote in 2021, after a trip to that year’s U.N. conference in Glasgow. 

This year’s edition, COP31, kicks off in Antalya, Turkey next week, with a focus on protecting countries hit hardest by the impacts of global warming and setting goals for electrifying world economies.

Burnham will be there — now as British prime minister. And that little-noticed article, published five years ago in the Evening Standard newspaper, says plenty about his political instincts on climate change. 

2021 was the high point of the U.K. consensus on net zero. But the then-future prime minister criticized the summit for giving a “pulpit” to billionaire Jeff Bezos (who had earlier that year “burnt more carbon in a trip to space than most people consume in a lifetime”) and took aim at protesters “with the time to glue themselves to roads … reprimanding ordinary people under work and time pressures for using their cars.” 

Burnham backed climate action, he insisted. But with its technocratic focus on “percentages and far-off dates, with remarkably little reference to the struggles of ordinary families,” there was a danger COP would send the wrong message: “That the drive to net zero will mean cost and inconvenience for ordinary people.” 

Several years and one big job change later, those views have not changed. 

Interviews with more than a dozen advisers, government officials, pollsters and MPs around Burnham reveal a PM convinced of the dangers posed to Britain and the world by runaway global warming — yet whose first instinct, sometimes to the frustration of climate advocates, is to prioritize cost of living and energy security worries at home. 

“I think Andy does get the big picture climate emergency, the urgency with which we need to act,” said Dale Vince, a clean energy entrepreneur and former New Age traveler who has advised Burnham on energy. But “millions of people in our country are asking: ‘How do I pay the bill?’” 

Many politicians are “out of touch with that,” Vince argued. “Andy doesn’t forget it.” 

Mr Pragmatic 

Burnham has been putting that approach into practice since taking power in July. 

Like his predecessor Keir Starmer, he believes the long-term solution to Britain’s cripplingly high energy costs is cutting dependence on expensive, foreign-controlled fossil fuels. But Burnham is also readier to drive down costs associated with the net-zero transition, many of which also end up on voters’ bills. 

In last month’s budget, Burnham’s Chancellor John Healey announced a new mantra: “first and foremost cheaper energy.” Renewables projects like solar and wind farms must now show how they’ll bring down bills if they want to get government support. A subsidy pot for low-carbon electric heat pumps was cut by up to £2.5 billion. Healey has promised to overhaul how energy costs are paid via bills in the new year. 

Most controversially, Burnham has presided over the decision by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh to approve a new gas field in the North Sea, Jackdaw. Ministers argued more gas drilling off the Scottish coast would give a short-term boost to energy security, with some of its tax revenues routed into developing clean power.

A decision on the oilfield Rosebank, where climate-damaging emissions will be even higher, is expected by the end of the year. 

There is a big difference, Burnham told MPs last month, between the “ideological” opposition of his anti-drilling Green Party rivals and his own “pragmatic approach.” 

The team of rivals 

Next week, Burnham will find out how that message plays on the global green stage. 

He will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, a prominent climate advocate. A Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said Burnham’s choice of Miliband to run the Foreign Office — even as he lets Healey cut some green spending at home — was a deliberate “team of rivals” ploy to balance Labour’s progressive and centrist wings on climate. 

“That’s the kind of the ideological fault line in the Cabinet, and it does run through climate, very much so,” the MP said.   

Burnham’s visit to COP is expected to be a short one. 

Those briefed on government planning expect him to attend for no more than a day. Emmanuel Macron, the French President, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — both also facing a backlash against the cost of living at home — are skipping the summit entirely. 

While in Antalya, Burnham should try to land his message that letting energy costs spiral higher and higher is the quickest way for countries to lose political support for climate action, say supporters of his agenda. 

“Bringing bills down would help the climate cause more than any speech,” argued Sunny Hundal, a former adviser at Britain’s biggest energy supplier Octopus and now boss of the Cheap Clean Energy Alliance campaign group. Nonetheless, he added: “If Britain is to not become a cautionary tale for the rest of the world, it has to show that the path to cleaner energy is through cheaper energy.” 

‘Betrayal’ 

The U.K. is seen by countries on the deadly frontline of climate change as a key ally in COP negotiations — particularly around weaning the world off fossil fuels. 

That means Burnham’s North Sea policies might get a cool reception, said Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa. 

“Jackdaw has certainly been noticed,” Adow said. “From Africa, it is deeply frustrating to see a wealthy country like Britain approve more fossil fuel production while asking developing countries to pursue a cleaner path. Decisions taken in London have consequences for people facing droughts and floods thousands of miles away.  

“Andy Burnham should be under no illusion: approving Rosebank would be a betrayal of the communities he will hear from at COP31.” 

Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and chair of the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, now expects Rosebank to get the go-ahead. Another Labour MP, the same quoted above, said Healey’s Treasury was “really pressuring” Fahnbulleh to approve the project because “it wants the tax revenue.” 

Burnham’s decision to show off some climate consciousness by attending COP at all is, the same MP said, partly a move to placate Labour’s more green-minded backbenchers in advance of approving Rosebank. 

“You get the feeling there’s political space being made for this shittier decision,” they said. 

Esterson took a more generous view of Burnham’s agenda. “He recognizes the [climate] imperative, but he also recognizes the reality of taking people with [him]. I think that’s at the heart of his whole approach to being prime minister, actually.” 

Political threats 

Political rivals spy an opportunity. 

“You can’t claim to be serious about climate leadership when you’re making it harder and more expensive for people to move away from fossil fuels,” said Pippa Heylings, energy security and net zero spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, attacking the “incoherence” of Burnham’s approach to climate.  

Carla Denyer, a Green Party MP and former co-leader of her party, pointed to Jackdaw and the looming call on Rosebank. “The change Andy Burnham promised has so far failed to materialize when it comes to tackling the climate crisis,” she said. 

Alienating voters worried about the climate carries political risks for Burnham, who has restored Labour’s lead in national opinion polls primarily by attracting Labour/Green swing voters, said polling analyst Steve Akehurst, director of Persuasion UK. 

“None of the individual policy tweaks or changes to net zero are likely to matter on their own, but if they add up to an overall picture of backtracking on climate action it will present a big opportunity for [Green leader] Zack Polanski,” said Akehurst. 

Taking climate “pragmatism” too far could alienate Labour’s existing voters, too. According to new Persuasion UK and YouGov polling shared with POLITICO, 22% of Labour’s 2024 voters list climate and environment in their top three priorities — but only 4% think Burnham does.  

“It’s one of the few policy areas that Labour voters prioritise but don’t currently sense that the PM does,” Akehurst said. 

But allies including Vince think Burnham’s strategy can head off a different political threat, this one coming from the right. 

Heat pump subsidies, he argued, were only helping households that could already afford the additional costs of switching to clean heat. “Middle class subsidies is what we’re about at the moment in the pursuit of net zero, and I think it’s been a gift to Reform,” said Vince, referring to Nigel Farage’s right-wing party, which along with the Conservatives say they would scrap the U.K.’s 2050 net zero target. 

“Icecaps and polar bears [are] all very well,” said Vince. “But when people are struggling to pay their energy bills — it’s not the primary thing that will persuade them.” 

LUXEMBOURG — Europe’s energy ministers are running out of ideas to protect citizens from surging energy prices as winter approaches.

But at a summit in Luxembourg on Thursday, they were clear on one thing: Demanding voters cut back on power use is not an option.  

European gas prices soared above €100 per megawatt-hour on Wednesday for the first time since 2022, as last-minute panic-buying to fill European gas reserves added to supply pressures linked to the war in the Middle East.  

But at the Thursday summit, EU energy ministers broadly acknowledged that both Brussels and national capitals had run out of ideas to contain price pressures.

“We’ve exhausted most of our short-term options,” said one senior European energy official, granted anonymity to offer a candid perspective. “What’s left is really crisis management.”

For the past year, government attempts to cushion price rises with renewables schemes, windfall taxes and costly fuel subsidies have ultimately failed to contain anxieties that have since boiled over into widespread protests across the continent.

“The EU and member states don’t have a magic wand to make the price increases go away,” Irish Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien, whose government holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, told reporters. “There’s a lot of measures that have been taken already in the short term. What today is about is actually seeing how we can move to more sustainable measures.”

But even crisis management is proving politically difficult. Despite calls by EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen earlier this year to encourage consumers and businesses to cut energy use, European ministers are reluctant to make such a move official policy.

“I don’t want to see that we will limit people,” said Mika Nykänen, the state secretary to Finland’s energy ministry. Instead, he called for policy designed to “change behavior” and reduce energy consumption less painfully. “Industry does it naturally. Normal households, normal families — they sometimes need encouragement,” he said. “For instance, subsidies to invest in the energy efficiency of houses, windows.”

Demand reduction “has an impact on industry, it has an impact on business, and in a difficult situation, it could be the way to do that. But it does not … solve the long-term,” Polish Secretary of State for Energy Wojciech Wrochna told reporters.

High prices “will regulate demand by itself,” Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch told reporters.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Such was the opposition to demand reduction measures on Thursday, Jørgensen — who was at the summit warning of a “difficult” winter of soaring fuel prices ahead — gave up even proposing it, focusing instead on subsidies. He reluctantly accepted that such subsidies could include fossil fuels as well as clean alternatives, but urged that they be “targeted and temporary.”

Since the war started, governments have paid €18 billion for tax relief on fossil fuel products, including a controversial move by Rome earlier this month to reduce the impact of gas prices on electricity costs.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned national leaders against this tendency, urging them at a summit this month to keep policies temporary and targeted to avoid inadvertently increasing fossil fuel demand and distorting the EU single market, according to two EU diplomats familiar with her comments.

That remains a point of contention among EU leaders, with some, including Greece, calling for greater fiscal space to increase energy subsidies while others warn of the dangers of subsidizing fossil fuels.

“Our concern is to make sure that we don’t create conditions where different member states go very far in different national decision-making,” said Lithuanian Energy Minister Lukas Savickas in a separate interview.

Jørgensen did not respond to POLITICO’s question at a subsequent press conference when asked whether new fiscal flexibilities were being considered.

Other ideas have gone by the wayside. Von der Leyen rejected calls by countries to establish an EU-wide tax on windfall profits of oil and gas companies at this month’s summit, the diplomats cited above said even as European oil companies like Shell, TotalEnergies and Repsol rake in their biggest profits since 2022.

Member countries also questioned the value of a Commission proposal to coordinate the purchase of energy supplies. Such a scheme would work in theory but be hard to implement for “big players” with established supply chains, Wrochna said.

Neither has the EU’s commitment to hastening the release of strategic crude oil and diesel reserves earlier this month — in response to what EU officials described as U.S. “blackmail” — done much to ease fuel costs.

Even so, the EU’s commitment will now include over 40 million barrels on top of the 10 million pledged by Paris, France’s economy minister Roland Lescure told reporters on Thursday.

A parallel push to delay methane monitoring requirements — a plank of the EU’s 2024 Green Deal that industry argued was poorly designed and would disrupt supplies — also had no impact on prices.

Slow pay-off

To be sure, measures designed to lower electricity prices and encourage consumers to switch away from imported fossil fuels are starting to work, with soaring sales of heat pumps and electric vehicles in Europe this year. “There’s no silver bullet, but when you add all of these things up, it can actually matter,” said Jørgensen.

But even longer-term efforts to encourage the switch to cleaner energy are facing backlash as countries resist ceding power to Brussels.

One example is a Commission proposal to make electricity bills more affordable and speed up electrification, including by ensuring electricity is not taxed more heavily than natural gas. Member countries pushed back against the proposal’s taxation provisions on Thursday, arguing that Brussels is overstepping EU treaties requiring that tax changes be approved unanimously, risking higher costs for households and industry.

Busch, the Swedish energy minister, said the proposal’s taxation provisions went too far, warning it would face “a lot of pushback” from countries concerned about EU interference in national tax policy.

Germany and Poland also raised concerns about the proposal’s potential impact on industry and national tax systems, while Italy warned that changing tax rates could make energy more expensive rather than encourage electrification.