Rewire
Labour has no clear roadmap for 2030 and beyond, but it’s increasingly likely that more than a “strategic gas power reserve to ensure security of supply” will be needed beyond 2030 to heat the millions of homes that have yet to be upgraded, fuel the millions of ICE cars still on the road and fuel the 90% of aircraft that still run on kerosene.
If by then North Sea oil and gas production declines to the point where it cannot meet UK demand, that demand will have to come from overseas.
The Labour Party said: National Grid “It has become the biggest obstacle to progress towards affordable, clean power generation and the electrification of industry.”
There is some truth to this. It is a scandal that wind farms have to be curtailed so often, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, because the electricity they produce cannot be transferred from the Scottish Highlands to the parts of the UK that need it (see Carbon Tracker’s report Gone with the wind?).
But the national grid is vital to achieving net-zero electricity by 2030. It’s not enough to just say, “Labour will work with industry to upgrade the national transmission infrastructure and rewire Britain.”
Emissions
The National Grid and Electricity Companies should be delegated as necessary to increase investment in the electricity network and improve the performance of connections and interconnections within the UK. In particular, public ownership should be considered at the very least, as the National Grid is a natural monopoly.
Another key difference in Labour’s approach is that: Land Use Planning. The manifesto promises stronger planning obligations to ensure new housing developments provide more affordable homes, but says nothing about ensuring the planning system as a whole supports climate-friendly development.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that indirect emissions as well as direct emissions must be considered when conducting environmental impact assessments for fossil fuel projects, and the new government has accepted this ruling.
But now the National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF) must be reformed to require planning applications for all new developments to demonstrate the impacts they might have on greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of the process.
Additionally, applications should be presumed to be rejected if emissions are expected to exceed the Paris Agreement compliance budget.
indigence
Without these reforms, there is a risk that new coal mines and new oil and gas production permits will still be approved. The manifesto promised that no new permits would be issued. Explore New oil and gas fields.
There is also a greater risk that planning applications for new renewable energy production, transmission and distribution will be rejected, to the extent that the target of net-zero electricity production by 2030 is not met.
The government must do more to convince local people that these developments, especially offshore wind farms, solar panels and power grid development, are of vital national significance for the benefit of all.
The success of the government’s focus on community energy production largely depends on the voluntary cooperation of local communities themselves. Labor has said in its previous Local Power Plan that it will at least require “local authorities to actively identify suitable areas for renewable energy production”. Putting more of this obligation on local authorities would help prevent them from missing the 2030 target.
that much Warm home planThe next parliament is likely to see £6.6 billion in funding to upgrade five million homes, which falls far short of Labour’s previous ambition to refurbish every home in England and is not enough to eradicate fuel poverty or reach net zero by 2050.
Solar power
In comparison, the proposed National Property Fund The £7.3 billion budget in the next parliament is little more than a series of incentives for corporate lobbying that will make it difficult to significantly cut emissions before 2030.
While there is no doubt that this will create jobs across steel, batteries, green hydrogen manufacturing and other industries, the statement seems to assume that relevant planning permission will be granted for these projects.
It also does not take into account the inevitable increase in electricity use that will follow, which will make it difficult to meet the 2030 target. It is also unclear how the fund will help low-income households.
It is also worth noting 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. This again highlights the need to prioritise the latter.
For now, the only surefire way to reduce energy costs and ease the strain on the national grid is to install solar panels on every building – which, incidentally, is also the policy of the Protect Rural Britain campaign.
expansion
The local renewable energy options favoured by Labour’s manifesto offer hope for the future, and could include not just rooftop solar but also onshore wind turbines, solar arrays, district heating and cogeneration schemes. But it’s unclear how much renewable electricity these schemes could generate by 2030, even under a more favourable planning system.
In ~ infrastructure Typically, proposed national infrastructure and services transformation agencies have no clear mission, just something like, “We need to build new roads, railways, reservoirs and other infrastructure of national importance.”
At least it is possible to argue that no new roads are needed, particularly the Stonehenge Tunnel (£3 billion+), the Lower Thames Crossing (£9 billion) and the Silvertown Tunnel (£2.2 billion).
This extravagance helps to highlight the ongoing government priority, with more money being invested in the three new damaged road schemes than the Warm Homes Plan and the National Wealth Fund combined. But because new road projects add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, reforming the NPPF would address this issue in due course.
It is also disappointing that the manifesto does not include any clear commitments to public transport, apart from a pledge to bring the railways into public ownership, nor does it include measures to curb the expansion of aviation. So transport appears to still be the UK government’s Achilles heel when it comes to mitigating climate change.
Subsidy Payment
The manifesto set a target of 1.5 million new homes in the next parliament, similar to the previous government’s target of 300,000 homes per year, but this target was not actually achieved. Going towards this target would likely increase electricity consumption, making it difficult to meet the 2030 target again.
Finally, Labor has pledged to create publicly owned energy companies. Great British Energy (GBE) and will be capitalised at a cost of £8.3 billion in the next parliament. This has the potential to reduce the capital cost of renewable energy production and make a significant contribution to achieving the 2030 target.
But it is not yet clear how it would work. A previous Labour policy paper published in March suggested GBE would “own, manage and operate energy production projects”.
This could mean they are set to compete with private energy companies, in which case they are unlikely to make a big difference in the energy market unless their bids are lowered.
If it’s the bid price ~is But if it’s lower than other companies, there’s a risk that other companies will go out of business, and there’s a greater chance that taxpayers will have to bear losses that will have to be subsidized.
invest
So rather than compete with other companies, the manifesto suggests that GBE will: Partnership ““We work with energy companies, municipalities and cooperatives to install thousands of clean power projects, combining offshore wind, solar and hydropower projects.”
But it is unclear how to develop such an inevitably complex network of partnerships. any Scale – local, regional or national. Labour’s updated local power plan in the March paper doesn’t even mention the obstacles the current planning system presents.
GBE must answer the following questions: Should the contract-for-difference system currently in use for new offshore wind projects be extended to onshore wind and solar power?
Will the 3-to-1 leverage of private-to-public investment promised in the proposed National Property Fund also apply to these new clean power projects?
Will investment in local energy production projects be offered on more favorable terms? If so, how favorable? And how likely is it that this level of public investment will attract enough private investment to ensure sound returns for private companies? and Can we produce carbon-free electricity by 2030?
Key Conclusions
In the future, the use of electricity will increase in electric vehicles, heat pumps, batteries, steelmaking, and green hydrogen, and the industry as a whole will hinder the decarbonization of electricity.
Contrary to Labor’s claims, the capital cost of renewable energy projects is unlikely to fall as the grid becomes increasingly decarbonised, a process that tends to put upward pressure on energy prices. Labor could choose to either massively increase public investment in renewable energy to reduce capital costs, or provide even more massive subsidies to energy consumers, or both.
Labour should not mislead the public by claiming that the creation of GBE will lower energy bills for householders. The most obvious way to reduce energy bills, apart from government subsidies, is to make homes more energy efficient. £6.6 billion is not enough to achieve this goal or the 100% green electricity target by 2030.
The national grid should be mandated to improve electricity transmission and distribution to meet the 2030 goals. If the goals cannot be met, consideration should be given to returning it to public ownership.
Labour still has a long way to go before it can provide a convincing explanation of how the UK will achieve its zero-carbon electricity target by 2030.
This author
Professor Peter Somerville is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy in the School of Social Sciences, University of Lincoln.
