Delegates at the UK Labour party’s annual conference, which took place at the end of September, have backed some radical moves on energy and climate policy. The Momentum campaign group led calls for Labour – the country’s main opposition party — to adopt a much more ambitious timetable than the “zero net carbon by 2050” policy of the government itself, instead seeking to reach zero carbon by 2030. Proponents justified the faster timetable on the grounds that since the UK had benefited in the past from massive use of fossil energy, the country ought to now shift more quickly and give poorer countries time to catch up with their transitions.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s shadow business secretary, said she would support the more ambitious aim if there were a “credible plan with trade unions and industry”, and a “just transition” that did not adversely affect workers. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Long-Bailey said: ”Provided we have a plan, I am happy to work as quickly as possible. I know we have got to act faster and we’ve got to push people to do that.” In the event, radical motions to that end got through, and are likely to shape Labour’s election manifesto, as part of its commitment to a “green industrial revolution”.
That commitment was already apparent at conference itself, when it was announced that Labour would invest £6.2bn from its proposed £250bn national transformation fund in 37 new offshore wind farms, taking wind to 52::GW. A matching amount would be invested by Labour’s proposed regional energy agencies, which would replace a renationalised National Grid, details of which were revealed earlier this year. The remaining £70bn would be sought from private-sector investors, with 51% of the new wind farms owned by the public.
Labour also intends to spend a projected £600m to £1bn a year in profits on coastal communities for amenities such as harbour fronts, parks, leisure centres and libraries, with the rest invested in improvements to the energy system and measures to combat global warming. It also outlined a £11bn Electric Vehicle investment and charging infrastructure support plan, coupled with a purchase loan scheme for such cars.
Target 2030
With Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate activist and young climate strikers much in evidence in recent weeks – XR is pushing for an even earlier zero-carbon date of 2025 – politicians were clearly keen to be seen to be doing something. In parallel with the Labour conference, the Green MP Carolyn Lucas and Labour’s Clive Lewis set out a Green New Deal Bill, which also has a zero carbon by 2030 target, along with social equity and justice criteria.
It has been produced by the independent Green New Deal Group, which calls for up to 5% of Gross National Product to be allocated every year up to 2030 in meeting carbon targets – that’s roughly £100bn annually. That figure is more specific than what appears in a background paper produced for Labour’s Green New Deal campaign, and also more than the £42bn that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have called for. That amounts to about 2% of Gross Domestic Product, which is in line with what was proposed by the Government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
There is obviously much to resolve, and specific allocations will no doubt get fought over in the months ahead.
There is obviously much to resolve, and specific allocations will no doubt get fought over in the months ahead, but the underlying programme now seems clearer. The main focus in the Green New Deal proposal is a massive expansion of renewables, with electricity generation “more than tripling”, with over 26 GW of new plant needed each year. The emphasis will be mainly on wind (both on and offshore) and solar power, although with a presumption against hydroelectricity schemes and ground-mounted photovoltaics unless proved environmentally appropriate.
Labour proposes adding wave and tidal schemes if they get cheaper, but, although the party seems keen on “green hydrogen” produced from renewables, there will be a move away from biomass energy crops and biofuels, given their dubious carbon balances. Moreover, background documents produced by the Labour for a Green New Deal group opposes any reliance on “unproven carbon removal technologies or problematic offsetting schemes, as is currently the case under the net-zero 2050 plan set forth by the CCC”. What that means is no carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon offsets or negative-emission technologies to compensate for continued emissions — and no to “net zero”.
That’s an increasingly popular view. “The use of a ‘net-zero’ target that integrates both goals for decarbonisation and allowances for carbon removal,” the Labour plan argues, “is an unacceptably high risk strategy that leads to ‘mitigation deterrence’ — falsely discounting the carbon reductions that are needed while weakening ambition and delaying progress toward a fully decarbonised economy.” Labour therefore wants the Green New Deal to clearly distinguish between “targets for emissions reductions and assumptions regarding negative emissions”. In other words, it wants to “limit the ‘net’ to include only those necessary emissions which can be offset through programmes such as domestic reforestation and rewilding”. So to ensure “global climate justice”, Labour wants its Green New Deal to “aim for zero carbon wherever possible”.
Carbon-capture problems
The Green New Deal’s background documents note that many existing government strategies – and most emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – assume that fossil-fuel will still be used albeit with CCS technology to reduce the associated emissions especially when it comes to using to using CCS with methane (natural gas) for centralised power generation and for producing hydrogen for industry, shipping and lorries. However, the documents warn of “high levels of uncertainty over the rates of carbon capture that can be achieved with life-cycle emissions perhaps only reduced by 60%, risking high residual emissions from the use of fossil fuels”. Additionally, they note, “the technical and economic viability of large-scale CCS is not proven and [is] lagging behind the large scale use of renewables”. This, in turn, will “increase risks of delays in decarbonisation, with drastic consequences”. What’s more, CCS technology “does not fully mitigate the other polluting impacts of fossil fuels, including air pollution and release of toxic by-products into the aquatic and terrestrial environment”.
Red and green in the US
The background documents also point out that many strategies propose the use of Negative Emission Technologies (NETs), such as Direct Air Capture, to remove carbon from the atmosphere, merely in an attempt to justify the continued burning of fossil fuels. “These technologies are unproven, likely high cost and would require massive expansion of the electricity network beyond that already required for green transport and heating,” the documents warn. “Other NETs such as Bioenergy with CCS are similarly unproven at scale and require huge areas of land to produce feedstocks, with significant ecological impacts, competition for land with food production and natural habitats, and air pollution when burned.”
Labour’s conclusion is clear. It says that the continued use of fossil fuels reliant on new technology is risky, expensive and has a high environmental impact. Carbon-capture technologies, it believes, will not remedy the “grave political consequences of allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue exerting political and economic might to obstruct progressive climate legislation”. It therefore wants the Green New Deal to prioritise the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, countering its decline with a “massive programme of investment in renewable energy”.
Nuclear uncertainty
When it comes to nuclear power, however, Labour is less clear. Nuclear is still backed by some trades unions, such as the GMB, but the Green New Deal documents point out that per-person emissions in countries like France and Sweden are similar to those in the UK despite them having low-carbon power sectors mainly through the many nuclear stations there. “There are currently no examples of high-income countries with genuinely low carbon economies,” Labour warns. “To correct this, the Green New Deal must extend its vision beyond the decarbonisation of the power sector into buildings, industry and transport’.
When it comes to nuclear power, however, Labour is less clear.
Fair enough, most countries in the world do well without nuclear. And those promoting the Green New Deal do have to go beyond power, to heat and transport, not least to see off assertions about the plan made by the likes of Neil Derrick from the GMB union, who claimed it would “require the confiscation of all petrol-fuelled cars still on the road, the state-rationing of meat, limiting families to one foreign flight every five years [and] the closure of whole industries.”
One perceived advantage of the Green New Deal, for Labour, is that “by precipitating a rapid transformation in collaboration with workers in the industries affected, the UK can benefit from first mover advantage in industries that will provide good, green jobs across the UK”. The party hopes it will create guaranteed work in the new zero-carbon economy “for those whose current roles are set to change”. But whether that includes people working in the nuclear sector isn’t clear.
Labour admits that big challenges lie in store, “particularly with respect to the transformation of the cement, steel and chemicals industries, all of which will be key to mass deployment of renewables, expansion of the electricity supply, and the development of a green transport system”. Still, the party is hopeful, with its Green New Deal seeing rapid improvements in energy efficiency and the “mass deployment of carbon-neutral heavy industry technology to allow economies of scale, send signals to world industry and drive innovation”.
It’s bold stuff, though even the Solar Trade Association thinks that it will be a “considerable challenge” to do all this by 2030. It certainly could be hard.
