Rewiring
Labour has no clear roadmap for post-2030, but it is becoming increasingly likely that after 2030 we will need more than a “strategic reserve of gas power stations to ensure security of supply” to heat the millions of homes yet to be retrofitted, fuel the millions of ICE vehicles still on the roads, and fuel the 90 per cent of aircraft still running on kerosene.
If by then production from the declining North Sea oil and gas fields is not sufficient to meet UK demand, this demand will have to be met from overseas.
The Labour Party declares: ” National Grid It is the biggest obstacle to the adoption of cheap, clean electricity generation and the electrification of industry.”
There is some truth in this: it is a scandal that wind power has to be frequently curtailed, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, simply because it cannot be transmitted from the Scottish Highlands to parts of England where it is needed (see the Carbon Tracker report “Gone with the Wind?”).
But a national electricity grid is also absolutely crucial to getting to carbon-neutral electricity by 2030. It’s not enough to say: “Labour will work with industry to upgrade the nation’s electricity infrastructure and rebuild the UK’s electricity grid”.
Emissions
The National Grid and electricity companies should be required to increase investment in the grid and improve connections and interconnections across the UK, where necessary. In particular, the National Grid is a natural monopoly, so nationalisation should at the very least be considered.
Another major flaw in the Labour approach is Land Use PlanningThe manifesto promises stronger planning duties to ensure new housing developments provide more affordable homes, but says nothing about ensuring the whole planning system supports climate-friendly development.
The Supreme Court recently ruled, and the new government has accepted, that for the purposes of environmental impact assessment of proposed fossil fuel projects, indirect as well as direct emissions must be taken into account.
However, the National Policy and Planning Framework (NPPF) now needs to be reformed to require planning applications for all new developments to demonstrate the impacts that the development may have on greenhouse gas emissions at each stage of the process.
There should also be a presumption that such applications will be rejected if projected emissions exceed the relevant budget in accordance with the Paris Agreement.
poverty
Without these reforms, there is a low risk that applications for new coal mining and oil and gas production licences will be approved – the manifesto simply promises not to issue any new licences. explore New oil and gas fields.
There is also a significant risk that planning applications for new renewable energy generation, transmission and distribution will be rejected, preventing us from achieving our goal of zero-carbon electricity by 2030.
Governments need to do more to convince local residents, especially those whose development of onshore wind farms, solar farms and the electricity grid is of vital national importance for the benefit of all.
The success of the government’s emphasis on local energy generation relies heavily on the active cooperation of the communities themselves. Labour’s previous Local Power Plan stated that at a minimum, “we will require local authorities to actively identify areas suitable for renewable energy generation”. Further requiring local authorities to do so would help avoid missing out on the 2030 target.
of Warm house plansThe plan, which will be budgeted for £6.6 billion in the next parliament, would see five million homes retrofitted – far short of Labour’s previous target of retrofitting every home in England and not enough to end fuel poverty or reach net zero by 2050.
Sun
In comparison, the proposed National Wealth Fund Proposals to spend £7.3 billion in the next Parliament look like nothing more than a series of incentives for business, unlikely to deliver any significant cuts in emissions by 2030.
Jobs would undoubtedly be created as a result in steel, battery and green hydrogen manufacturing, and in industry generally, but the manifesto seems to assume that the relevant planning permission for these projects will be granted.
The plan also doesn’t take into account inevitable increases in electricity use that will make the 2030 target even harder to reach, and it’s unclear how the fund would help low-income households.
It is also important to note that replacing gas boilers with heat pumps and gas stoves with induction stoves will increase electricity demand, making it more difficult to decarbonise electricity by 2030 – again highlighting the need to prioritise the latter.
Currently, the only surefire way to cut energy bills and ease the strain on the national grid is to install solar panels on every building – and this happens to be a policy of the Campaign to Protect England’s Countryside.
expansion
Community renewables, supported in the Labour manifesto, are a promising future and include not only rooftop solar PV but also onshore wind turbines, solar photovoltaic arrays, district heating and cogeneration schemes, but even under a more favourable planning system it is unclear how much renewable electricity such schemes will be able to generate by 2030.
upon infrastructure In general, the proposed National Infrastructure and Services Transformation Agency does not have a clear mission, simply that it “should advance new roads, railways, reservoirs and other infrastructure of national importance.”
At the very least, an argument can be made that new roads are not needed, particularly the Stonehenge Tunnel (costing over £3 billion), the Lower Thames Crossing (£9 billion) and the Silvertown Tunnel (£2.2 billion).
Such waste serves to highlight the Government’s continuing priorities, with more money being invested in three new harmful road schemes than the Warm Homes Scheme and the National Wealth Fund combined.But reform of the NPPF could remedy this in time, as new road schemes will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also disappointing that the manifesto makes no clear commitments to public transport beyond a promise to nationalise the rail sector, and contains no measures to stop the expansion of air transport. So transport appears to remain the UK Government’s weakest link when it comes to mitigating climate change.
Subsidy
The manifesto sets a target of building 1.5 million new homes by the next parliament, roughly the same as the previous government’s target of 300,000 a year, but this target has not been met in practice. Moving towards such a target would likely lead to increased electricity consumption, making the 2030 target difficult to meet again.
Finally, Labor has committed to creating a national energy company. Great British Energy Capitalise the Global Power Efficiency Index (GBE) in the next Parliament at a cost of £8.3 billion. This will reduce the capital cost of renewable energy generation and could make a significant contribution to meeting the 2030 target.
But it’s not yet clear how that would work: a Labor policy paper published in March proposed that GBE “own, manage and operate energy generation projects”.
This could mean it would be set up in competition with private energy companies, in which case it would likely have little impact on energy markets unless it was underbid.
The bid price is teeth But if it is lower than others, it risks putting other businesses out of business and also increases the likelihood that it will operate at a loss that taxpayers will have to subsidize.
investment
Alternatively, rather than competing with other companies, GBE declares that it will: partnership”“Through a combination of onshore wind, solar and hydroelectric projects, we will work with energy companies, local governments and cooperatives to deliver thousands of clean power projects.”
But it is not clear how such a necessarily complex network of partnerships will be structured. Any The scale can be local, regional or national.Labour’s Rural Power Plan, updated in its March report, makes no mention of the impediments posed by the current planning system.
GBE will need to address questions such as: Will the contract-for-difference system currently in operation for new offshore wind be extended to onshore wind and solar?
Will the 3:1 leverage between private and public investment promised in the proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund also apply to these new clean power projects?
Would investment in community energy generation projects be offered on more favorable terms, and if so, how favorable? And what are the chances that this level of public investment would attract enough private investment to provide healthy profits and benefits to the private companies? and Zero carbon electricity by 2030?
Key findings
In the future, the increased use of electricity for EVs, heat pumps, batteries, steelmaking, green hydrogen, industry, etc. will work against the decarbonisation of electricity in general.
Contrary to Labor’s claims, the capital costs of renewable energy projects are unlikely to fall as the grid decarbonizes, a process that is likely to put upward pressure on energy prices. Labor can choose to significantly increase public investment in renewables to reduce capital costs, or provide even larger subsidies to energy consumers, or both.
Labour should not mislead the public by claiming that the creation of the GBE will reduce household energy bills. Apart from government subsidies, the most surefire way to reduce energy bills is to make homes more energy efficient. £6.6 billion is not enough to achieve this, nor the target of 100% green electricity by 2030.
The national grid must be mandated to improve transmission and distribution to meet the 2030 target, and nationalization will need to be reconsidered if it is not on track to meet the target.
Labour is nowhere close to explaining convincingly how the UK will achieve its goal of zero-carbon electricity by 2030.
This author
Professor Peter Somerville is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lincoln.
