The Labour government was elected with a hefty green mandate to build out clean energy and tackle climate change.
The endorsement/sanction is bolstered by the electoral success of the Green Party and Lib Dems – which both campaigned on green issues – and the failure of the Tories’ strategy to talk down climate action.
This week the new Energy Secretary Ed Miliband committed to six priorities.
Here’s why they are harder to achieve than they sound.
Priority one: Boost energy independence and cut bills through clean power by 2030
Labour says it can get the UK off foreign fossil fuels, cut energy bills and tackle the climate crisis in one fell swoop: by making electricity 100% clean by 2030. (Last year was 51%).
It’s not drastically different to the Tories’ 2035 target. But the earlier date will require an “Apollo moon mission-like effort”, said Adam Bell, director of policy at Stonehaven.
It requires billions of pounds of cleverly-targeted investment, slicing through layers upon layers of planning rules.
And it demands an eruption of UK infrastructure: from wind farms to hundreds of kilometres of cables and pylons, which even a Green Party MP is resisting.
Labour has already started on planning reforms and lifting the effective ban on onshore wind.
The challenge
But a big piece missing from the puzzle is how we are going to back up renewables on grey, windless days.
Big decisions loom on nuclear, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen, all of which are expensive.
And the major obstacle to all of this is whether the UK’s creaky energy grid can keep up – and if the public can stomach the mass of building to go alongside.
A new “Mission Control” centre will coordinate a lot of this work.
“The big question is, is government organised enough to deliver?”, said Mr Bell.
