James Ratcliffe has warned the government that British businesses simply can’t afford “yet another tax bill.”
The founder of chemical powerhouse Ineos Group and co-owner of Manchester United said, “a tax designed to reduce emissions is, in practice, killing manufacturing” and “making the U.K. more dependent on imports and is increasing emissions.”
Ratcliffe’s criticism comes at a time when his Ineos is facing a £15 million tax bill for the carbon emissions that it generated in 2024 at the conglomerate’s plant at Grangemouth in Scotland.
The UK Emissions Trading Scheme was designed to incentivize British businesses to cut their emissions as part of government’s effort to achieve its climate targets. The scheme requires companies from energy-intensive industries to pay for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit.
Britain’s scheme is similar to the European Union’s ETS, and recent reports indicate they could become linked in the future. Officials have recently been holding talks aimed at making permits issued in one system redeemable in the other.
In response to Ratcliffe’s comments, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said, “Our mission is for clean power by 2030 because clean, homegrown energy is the best way to protect billpayers and boost Britain’s energy independence.
“A strong UK Emissions Trading Scheme will play a key role in this, driving green investment as part of a broader industrial strategy, creating jobs and growing the U.K.’s economy.”
Ratcliffe supports the wider goal of achieving a greener future, but he believes the government needs to rethink its approach.
“At a time when British industry is still finding its feet after Covid, facing uncertainty due to U.S. tariffs, grappling with some of the highest energy prices in the developed world, and trying to compete against far more favorable conditions in the Middle East and the United States, this is another heavy blow. Quite simply, businesses can’t afford it,” Ratcliffe said.
Ineos is now pausing some of its investment in projects that were designed to make its operations more efficient and more sustainable, and its chairman said they’re not alone. Ratcliffe said British manufacturers up and down the country are facing this reality.
In January, Ineos said it was forced to shut down its synthetic ethanol plant at Grangemouth due to high energy prices and high carbon taxes. Britain’s energy prices have doubled in the last 5 years and are now five times higher than those in America, the company said at the time. The U.K. cannot compete with such a huge disadvantage.
Ineos, which owns several petrochemical plants at Grangemouth, said the ethanol production facility was the last in the U.K.
“De-industrializing Britain achieves nothing for the environment,” Ratcliffe said at the time. “It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere…We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”
Ineos was started by Ratcliffe in 1998, when he bought a former BP petrochemical site at Antwerp in Belgium. It’s now one of the world’s largest chemical companies. Ineos said it generated revenues of 16.2 billion euros ($18.4 billion) in 2024, an almost 9% jump from a year earlier.
Forbes estimates Ratcliffe has a net worth at $16.8 billion, a figure that’s largely derived from his ownership of Ineos. His privately held conglomerate has long been involved in the world of professional sports, with links to Formula One, cycling, sailing, soccer and rugby.