Labour’s low cost and practical proposals for expansion of onshore and offshore wind, solar power, energy conservation and increases in renewable heat are the surest sign yet that they are the competent choice for Government. Their proposals need some elaboration in places and some work on detail, but seem to be in a different dimension compared to the Tory Government who seem increasingly certain to be heading for self-destruction on the anvil of Brexit. Rebecca Long-Bailey is aiming for 85 per cent of electricity to come from low carbon power by 2030. This is an easily achievable target, and will be done at low cost if simultaneously Labour cancels the disaster-in-waiting project at Wylfa, and some way can be found to avoid Hinkley C being built. As I indicated in a recent post, there’s already enough offshore wind in the pipeline to ensure well over 50 per cent of electricity coming from renewables by 2025.
Dave Toke’s Blog 27th Sept 2018 read more »
To coincide with its annual conference, the Labour Party has just launched a new environmental policy document, The Green Transformation. A key element of its proposals on energy is to bring ‘the UK’s energy transmission and distribution networks back into public ownership’. Much media debate has been on how that will be financed, which is obviously an important issue. Here, however, our focus is on what such a move would mean for the running of networks. Labour’s shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was clear in his speech to the conference that this would not be about the state ownership of the 1970s, saying: ‘Be clear, nationalisation will not be a return to the past. We don’t want to swap one remote manager for another.’ Instead, he announced that the Labour Party setting out plans that would put the water industry back in the hands of councils, workers and customers. Both the Party and the media have been focusing on the shared worker ownership of Labour’s new policies. However, for networks, the role of consumers in ownership is particularly important in this vision, for reasons to do with a problem that has dogged the current approach to energy infrastructure since privatisation in the 1980s.
iGov 27th Sept 2018 read more »
Would the energy market benefit from Corbyn’s proposed wind turbines and renewable subsidies? Alan Lockey, head of research at Demos, says YES. Tony Lodge, research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, says NO.
City AM 28th Sept 2018 read more »
The UK has joined a growing number of nations pushing to deliver net zero emissions during the second half of the century in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, after the government today signed up to the now 19-strong global Carbon Neutrality Coalition. The Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) today confirmed the UK is among four new additions to rhe group, along with Canada, Denmark and Spain.
Business Green 27th Sept 2018 read more »
Edie 27th Sept 2018 read more »