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Labour plans to decarbonise the grid by 2030, delivering 100 per cent ‘clean’ energy five years earlier than the Government. Until recently, this eyebrow-raising ambition was to be met with the added investment of their £28 billion ‘Green Prosperity Plan’. But that fell foul of Morgan McSweeney’s all-seeing eye and became the latest once-solid Keir Starmer pledge to be scrapped.
What remained was GB Energy: Ed Miliband’s proposal for a new state-owned renewable energy company to be set up immediately upon entering government, with the ambition of investing in wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy. Starmer and his Energy Secretary today announced the first stage of a projected £8.3 billion in five-year investment in their new uber-quango.
Like James Cleverly’s leadership platform, Miliband’s plans have a little something for everyone. GBE will develop wind farms with private companies, kicking the planning system up the backside in the hot pursuit of the 2030 target. Since the Government is partnering with the Crown Estate to build on the seabed it owns, Miliband’s eco-Keynesianism has been given a trad rebranding.
According to Miliband, “the effect on bills” will be felt “in the next couple of years”. Even if they don’t immediately tumble down, we will “get off that lack of control” that allows Vladimir Putin to dictate what we pay for energy. If “we drive…clean, homegrown British energy”, we will “have much more control”. What’s wrong? Patriotic, good for Johnny Polar Bear, and bad for the Ruskies.
I’m a little more sceptical. For one thing, Robert Colville did God’s work during the election and crunched the numbers on Labour’s sums. Miliband had pledged to save households £300. Colville pointed out that such sums were done at a point when energy bills were much higher. Most of the savings have already been achieved. In the best-case scenario, Labour would save you £44.
But that was if Labour achieved everything originally outlined in the ‘Green Prosperity Plan’: a shopping list of new energy provisions. In Colville’s words, “quadrupling offshore wind, more than tripling solar power, more than doubling onshore wind and green hydrogen, spending buckets on new nuclear”. Even when Rachel Reeves was stumping up £28 billion, this was brave.
Now? It is wholly unrealistic. A recent Policy Exchange report suggests that ambitions such as tripling the amount of UK offshore wind generating capacity, and doubling solar electricity and onshore wind capacity cannot physically be done unless Labour spends at least £15.6 billion a year. Even with the cash, skill shortages and supply chain issues make it impossible.
Sticking it to the NIMBYs is welcome, and necessary. But can it double the UK’s total electricity capacity by 2030? Blackouts seem more likely than Labour hitting their target. Even if decarbonisation – by reducing our reliance on overseas sources of energy – would reduce our bills in the long term, the immediate costs of Labour’s plans take the proposals into the realm of fantasy.
Even then, as Helen Thompson has highlighted, the vast bulk of British energy consumption would remain exposed to international price hikes – unless Labour were willing to cough up similarly vast sums to subsidise voters buying heat pumps and electric vehicles. Good for China, bad for the public finances. However Herculean the sums spent, we are not becoming an energy exporter.
Even if we did build vast new reserves of wind and solar power, we still live in a country where, on occasion, the wind does not blow, and the sun does not shine. If we must carpet the country in something, build as many mini-nuclear reactors and frack as much as possible. If you must dig up our seabed, squeeze every last drop out of the North Sea. That’s not Miliband’s cup of tea.
This only adds to the lack of realism around the whole project. Labour are not idiots. How have they committed to a set of proposals so hideously doomed to fail? They are only in the spirit of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, fellow Net Zero Kool-Aid drinkers. ‘Levelling-Up’ promised green jobs across our deindustrialised towns. Labour copy and pasted our idle fantasies.
Undoubtedly, the contemporary left tends to view the tergiversations of our climate more as an existential crisis than an excellent opportunity for the English sparkling wine industry. Miliband is a true believer, and wanted to nationalize the Big Six energy companies. But an almost-admirable intensity is no substitute for an empty Treasury and a lack of building capacity.
As so often in politics, this is a case of the vagaries of personality and the vexed relationships of a few over-mighty individuals damning the country. Starmer owes his political career to Miliband. His predecessor was one of the few well-known and Cabinet-experienced Labour MPs he could bring into his team. He wanted him onside. Green boondoggles were the route to his heart.
As much as Miliband may hope that GB Energy will clean our atmosphere, save consumers money, and leave him with a political legacy more extensive than an inability to eat a bacon sandwich, this whole policy has to be seen as a long-winded attempt by Starmer to keep him happy via some paltry Treasury handouts and looking serious in a hardhat and a high-vis.
When it becomes obvious Miliband’s ambitions are unrealisable, will he kick up a fuss, or be gently moved on? Who knows. In the meantime, weep for a country that already has the highest industrial energy prices in the OECD, has sent electricity costs soaring through virtue-signally taxes and regulations, and has already sacrificed industry on the altar of Miliband’s Climate Change Act.
We are already falling far short of renewable capacity targets. Miliband’s plans will make those targets far harder to reach, whilst failing to provide the means required to meet them. One hopes it makes him happy, and that something else branded GB will at least deliver this month.
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