Donate | Conservative Environment Network

SUPPORTING CEN

If you want to support CEN’s work with a financial contribution, you can do so here or by clicking the button below. If you would like to hear more about our organisation and plans for the future, please contact our Office Manager, Emma Ware (emma@cen.uk.com), to learn more.

Support CEN

OUR ACHIEVEMENTS

CEN was established in 2013 to provide a platform for conservatives to discuss and champion bolder action on climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss, and to nudge the Conservative Government in a greener direction.

Since then, CEN has built a broad network across the conservative movement – from parliament, to council chambers, to parish halls – in support of environmental campaigns. While the Conservative Party was in government between 2010 and 2024, CEN and our supporters played an instrumental role in developing and securing some of the UK’s key environmental policies, including:

Campaigning to introduce and expand a Blue Belt of marine reserves around the UK’s Overseas Territories
Reforming farm subsidies post-Brexit to reward farmers for sustainable farming and for improvements they make to the natural environment
Cracking down on polluting water companies by removing the cap on fines and ringfencing fines for environmental improvements
Enshrining net zero into law and decarbonising faster than any other G7 country, whilst growing the economy by 79%
Passing the landmark 2021 Environment Act, which included new legally binding air quality targets and a target to halt species decline by 2030
Decarbonising our electricity sector by increasing the proportion of renewables, building Europe’s biggest offshore wind sector, and phasing coal out of our energy mix
Scrapping VAT on energy efficiency products to cut the cost of heat pumps, insulation, and solar panels for households
Creating deforestation due-diligence obligations to make it illegal for large companies in the UK to use commodities or derive products from illegally deforested land
Creating the Nature for Climate Fund with £640 million to enhance woodland cover and restore, protect, and better manage our peatlands
Hosting COP26, the UN climate summit, in Glasgow and negotiating the Glasgow Climate Pact, which included a global agreement to reduce coal power and end deforestation

With the Conservative Party now into opposition in Westminster, and as conservatism undergoes a period of profound disruption and renewal, the need for strong conservative voices and policies on the environment has never been greater. We need to redouble our efforts to make the case and develop the policies for an ambitious, pro-growth, conservative approach to the environment. In the coming years, CEN will work to:

Strengthen and secure the role of the environment within the future Conservative policy platform. We will seek to influence the Conservatives’ policy review process and ultimately work to secure Conservative support for ambitious climate, clean air, and nature policies in their next general election manifesto.
Ensure a constructive conservative environmentalist opposition is mounted to the new government. We will develop a measured critique of the new government’s environmental agenda, highlighting excesses of government intervention, economic inefficiencies, and gaps between rhetoric and delivery, and develop a positive alternative to Labour’s policies, focused on economic and philosophical dividing lines rather than environmental ones.
Renew the intellectual foundations of conservative environmentalism. We will remind conservatives of the long tradition of conservative environmentalism and situate modern environmental issues within that intellectual heritage. We will place greater emphasis on and faithfulness to the free market principles underpinning a conservative approach to the environment, enabling constructive differentiation from a left-wing approach.

We are very proud of our record of influence and impact. But with major political change on the right of UK politics, there is much to be done to fight for a positive conservative environmental agenda in the years ahead. With that in mind, we hope that you will donate to CEN, and help us champion conservative environmentalism by contributing towards our core operating costs.

Donate to CEN

“CEN has been at the forefront of the progress the UK has made on net zero and nature in the past decade. And most of our groundbreaking environmental policies, from the commitment to phase out coal, the introduction of subsidies for sustainable farming, and the ringfencing of water company fines for environmental improvement schemes are all the results of CEN campaigns””

Lord Hague

Former Leader of the Opposition

“CEN has played an invaluable role in our Party over the last decade, with some notable achievements including campaigning to scrap VAT on insulation, and securing a Natural History GCSE”

Rishi Sunak MP

Former Prime Minister

Portrait_of_Prime_Minister_Rishi_Sunak_(cropped).jpg

“CEN is one of the most active conservative groups. Never before has CEN been so relevant to the conversations we are having in our party”

Baroness May

Former Prime Minister

TESTIMONIALS

“We will not achieve our net zero ambitions by harming the economy or by villainising business and free enterprise, and it’s great to see the Conservative Environment Network facilitating this discussion between centre-right leaders”

Boris Johnson

Former Prime Minister