Lincolnshire County split over green revolution as Reform UK takes aim at net zero targets

In early summer the wide open fields of Lincolnshire seem to expand beneath even larger clear blue skies.

- Jillian Ambrose

Travel north through the breadbasket of Britain towards the North Sea, from Grantham to Grimsby, and farming gives way to factories, refineries and docks. Each sector tells a story of Britain's industrial decline: the demise of heavy industry on the banks of the Humber, the closure of coal power plants, fishing fleets decimated by the cod wars of the 1970s and 80s.

Lincolnshire is central to the government's plan for a green reindustrialisation to galvanise the country's net zero agenda, create jobs and revitalise deprived areas.

Under this vision Britain's ports will become the industrial heartlands for the growing offshore wind sector, and refineries and factories will pioneer the carbon capture technology considered essential to reach the world's climate goals. On shore, acres of gleaming solar panels will blanket farmland and the old sites of demolished coal power plants, with miles of pylons and cables crossing the county to connect the windfarms to the power grid.

This vision, however, is on a collision course with a rising Reform UK, as well as the tough economic climate. In few places is this battle more evident than Lincolnshire. The party's founder, Nigel Farage, has called the government's net zero ambitions a "lunacy" that destroys jobs, drives up bills and is responsible for the deindustrialising of Britain. He has predicted that the schism over net zero will be the "next Brexit".

The region's remaining heavy industry is imperilled: ministers had to intervene in April to stop the closure of the Scunthorpe steelworks' blast furnaces; the Lindsey oil refinery near Immingham is in financial trouble; and a biodiesel plant owned by Greenergy, part of the commodities company Trafigura, is to close.