Finally Some Good News! Britain To Become a Clean Energy Superpower!
And this is how ...
Dear Human of Planet Earth,
If I told you I had some good news, would you dare to believe it?
The UK Labour Party has five missions for government. Mission #2, MAKE BRITAIN A CLEAN ENERGY SUPERPOWER, is the best UK news I’ve had all year. Mission #1 is to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 and the second is, of course, a driver for the first.
You might not find this cheerful news trumpeted via other media with all the excitement and focus it deserves, so I’ve laid it out for you below.
You’re welcome!
Prepare to be excited!
Goodbye to Tory Sticking Plaster Politics
First, a reminder of where we are.
Tories blocked onshore wind and abandoned home insulation. They left the market to do all the work yet provided only market uncertainty and confusion. It’s a bit of a pantomime:
Tories: we’ll help you with your energy bills by deferring the cost to you and covering it in the short term. We could have helped you much better by not slowing the home insulation programme ten years ago to a crawl, but we’re pennywise and pound foolish with your pennies and pounds. Sorry!
And to protect you from price shocks in the future, we’ve banned onshore wind and we’re investing in oil and gas projects which will take many years to get off the ground. By which time, at this rate, oil and gas will cost more than they do now, while solar will cost even less.
Yes, there’s a climate emergency and we’re signed up to Net Zero by 2050. But let’s lock the UK into as many oil and gas licences as we can …We’re world-leading and world-beating at making sure consumers and industry pay more than necessary!
Us: Oh yes, you are!
And the pantomime continues under Rishi Sunak:
Tories: Yes, we’re ending the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.
Industry response: (getting ready …)
Tories: (U-turning) Oh no, we’re not!
Hello to Labour’s Strategic Plans
Labour on the other hand, in preparation for governing seriously, has identified the estimated numbers of homes to be prioritised for insulation in each region, and the job creation expected per region based on renewable energy, insulation and other industry upgrades.
Let’s take a look at the elements of Labour’s clean energy Green Prosperity Plan, and do cartwheels as we realise how beautifully these cogs turn together.
Great British Energy (GBE)
The National Wealth Fund
The Warm Homes Plan
Generating a Zero-Carbon Electricity System by 2030 (Labour’s Biggest Hairy Audacious Plan!)
Upgrading The Grid
Making The UK the Green Finance Capital of the world
Already, you can see how our economy stops sputtering as the wheels begin to turn. You can see the jobs for plumbers, electricians, technicians, engineers and others in the construction industry; jobs in training and research; and tax receipts for the government to invest in our national services.
The Role of Great British Energy
An energy transition is a massive undertaking. Alas, it’s not a vanity project nor an economic race between nations for mere strategic advantage. Rather, it’s a critical component to averting the worst potential impacts of climate catastrophe. We no longer have the luxury of time to wait for the market to do it. After all, markets can be paralysed and buoyed by irrational emotion and short-term thinking. We need a steadier ship.
Headquartered in Scotland, Great British Energy will be a publicly owned mechanism to support the private sector and allow for transition at the pace and scale required. Today, both foreign governments and foreign-owned business own much of the UK’s energy infrastructure, while championing and developing their own. With Great British Energy, we’ll be transforming energy generation and keeping the profits at home where they can be re-invested.
Win-Win!
Great British Energy will be capitalised by investment over the course of Parliament, until it’s matured into a self-sustaining entity.
GB Energy will nurture homegrown supply chains, research and development, and partnerships with businesses both large and small; champion the development of additional capacity in renewable and nuclear power (i.e. newer, small modular reactors) and facilitate private investment in new and emerging technologies.
After securing energy security at home, GB Energy will utilise its built-up expertise and capacity to export clean energy, while retaining earnings from intellectual property and exported technology for the national purse.
GB Energy will invest in local energy production, re-directing some profit to local communities and local authorities, so that energy production is a local asset, rather than a commodity owned by faceless multinationals.
Of note, over 50% of wind energy in Denmark and Germany is citizen-owned.
Here at home, successful local partnership models include:
The Fintry Wind Farm in Scotland where tens of thousands of pounds of profit go back to the local community
The Plymouth Energy Community solar projects which channel profits into a community fund
A wind turbine built on Bristol City Council land which generates surplus profits for the council estate it’s built on.
We know what works! Let’s scale things up and make it happen.
The National Wealth Fund
Labour’s new National Wealth Fund will invest public funds strategically, ensuring that the British taxpayer gets a return on investment, and in some cases, shares in project equity. The National Wealth Fund will lead by ensuring we modernise our infrastructure in every region:
upgrading ports so they are renewable-ready
decarbonising industry, including the steel industry
supporting green hydrogen manufacturing
developing the gigafactories needed to support car manufacturing
In other words, doing the big things that governments do to facilitate business projects that are too big and broad for individual industries to be expected to lead on them.
The Warm Homes Plan
Ten years ago, insulation rates plummeted after the Coalition government of Tories and Lib Dems cut energy efficiency programmes. With old housing stock and the least efficient housing in Western Europe, 40% of the UK’s energy usage is from heating buildings.
Labour in government will upgrade insulation for nineteen million homes over a decade. This will have the effect of creating jobs up and down the country, reducing household bills by up to £1000 every year for families, and reducing gas imports.
Creating a Zero-Carbon Electricity System by 2030 and Upgrading the Grid
Under the Tories, planning approval for major infrastructure projects doubled to four years. And that’s just the approval stage. Labour will remove the onshore wind ban and work arduously to speed up approval, so that projects do not languish on ministry desks for years.
The UK already generates 40% of energy from renewables, despite failing to embrace onshore wind and failing to insist on solar panels for all new buildings. The price of generating energy from renewables has been falling exponentially. Meanwhile, existing wind farms release much less electricity into the system than they can generate - limited by infrastructure challenges.
Indeed, renewable generators are paid to turn ‘off’ their generation on particularly windy days, due to lack of capacity to store or transmit surplus energy.
Clean power generation and clean industry will require four times as much grid infrastructure to be built in the next seven years as has been built in the last 30. The grid has now become the single biggest obstacle to both deploying cheap, clean power and electrifying industry.
Unlocking potential energy from our existing systems by upgrading the grid is part of Labour’s plan to rewire Britain.
When a government is serious about attracting investment and developing infrastructure, change can happen fast. Consider the impact of the Biden government’s Inflation Reduction Act on invigorating investment and manufacturing, creating over 100,000 new jobs in less than six months, with millions more to come.
Yeah, but China …
Don’t worry about China. They’re minding their own business. See here.
In 2007, China released a national action plan on climate, calling for technological solutions to the climate problem. Private and state-owned companies responded strongly.
Fifteen years later, China is in the lead in every low-carbon category. Its total installed renewable capacity is staggering, accounting for a third of the world’s total, and it is leading in electric vehicle production and sales.
In the first three quarters of 2023, over 53% of China’s electricity came from low-carbon sources: hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and nuclear.
Source:- COP28: Why China's clean energy boom matters for global climate action (theconversation.com)
Your conclusion? Where there’s political will, there’s a way.
Green Finance
You may have heard Christiana Figuera chatting with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell on their Leading podcast recently, pointing out that insurance companies know their business model may become obsolete. Homes, cars, and lives will all be uninsurable under a perpetually chaotic climate.
‘There’s no business on a dead planet’ might be a climate protest cliché but it’s true. The estimated future economic damage to the global economy exceeds the upfront cost of transitioning1 to Net Zero, just as the cost of not upgrading our grids exceeds the cost of upgrading it2. To be frank, in the worst-case but very plausible scenarios, climate catastrophe will wipe out the economy and civilisation as we know it, reducing surviving communities to bartering - which is why climate experts agree we have an emergency.
But I digress. Let’s get back to focusing on the good news. We may yet avert the worst.
As a major financial centre, one of the largest impacts the UK can have on global emissions is to mobilise the trillions of pounds of private finance in pursuit of the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.
Labour will make the UK the green finance capital of the world, mandating UK - regulated financial institutions - including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers - and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5 deg C goal of the Paris Agreement across their portfolios.
The Tories have already told us they can’t be trusted
They’re equivocal about Net Zero, conflating it with ‘wokery’ when it suits them.
They send mixed, confused signals to industry.
At COP 27 and 28 they have been dismissive, cocky and played politics with a transnational problem, heedless of the reality that climate is no respecter of borders.
Even loyal, Tories like Lord Deben and Zac Goldsmith have declared their frustration with Tory incompetence and lack of climate commitment.
No habitat, no civilisation
In 2019 I voted Labour because they had a plan for a green industrial revolution. In 2020, I joined the Labour Party because I knew another five years of Tory leadership would hold our energy transition back and I wanted to work with Labour to get the Tories out.
I’m delighted to see that the Labour Party has an ambitious, credible and well-considered plan for transition and that they’re already building relationships with industry to make it happen.
Maybe I sound like a one-issue voter but there is no Planet B. We have an unpredictable and narrowing window of opportunity.
Let’s get through it while we still can.
Sources and further reading
In this piece above, direct quotes from the Labour Party website are indicated by bolded block quotes, while details sourced from the site and paraphrased are indicated by italics.
Read more about the Labour Party’s Five Missions here.
Read more about the Tories’ mismanagement of our energy security and weep:
Yet it seemed there was no one ministers would listen to. They ignored recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change (the government’s official advisers), NGOs, the National Infrastructure Commission and the opposition. The result has been a staggering 85% decline in home insulation installations between 2012 and 2019. Under current plans, it will take 700 years to upgrade Britain’s homes for low-carbon heating. After a decade of inaction, we are now paying the price of remaining so dependent on gas.
Rishi Sunak announces U-turn on key green targets | Green politics | The Guardian
Sunak accused of retreating from global climate leadership at Cop28 | Cop28 | The Guardian
Lots of Love,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical,
Croydon,
London,
That patch of earth known today as the United Kingdom
Lat +51.51 Long, -0.118
The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells
Thanks for a great summary of this. I hadn't seen this level of detail before. Let's hope they don't water down these ambitions in the run up to the election!