Twenty years ago, I sat beside Al Gore as he addressed Terra Firma’s annual investor conference.

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Local primary school children opened the event by singing Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi - a song warning about environmental destruction long before climate change entered the political mainstream. There was a genuine sense of optimism that governments and businesses could work together to tackle one of the defining challenges of our generation. I had bought thousands of copies of An Inconvenient Truth for our investors because I believed climate change would shape the future of society and business.

Optimism shaped my thinking for years. But optimism must be tested by due diligence. I commissioned an investigation into what it would take to decarbonise the British economy over the following fifty years. The work took seven years and drew on experts from multiple disciplines. We examined technologies, infrastructure, energy systems and the economics of decarbonisation.

The conclusion was not that climate change was less serious than we had thought. It was that deep decarbonisation would be more complex, more expensive and involve greater economic and social trade-offs than most public debate acknowledged. This did not mean the objective was wrong but that honesty about costs and benefits was crucial for public support.

As Britain endures another heatwave and political consensus on climate policy fractures, I ask whether our current approach remains the best way to........

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