Weekly Blog - 19 June 2023 - Labour Green Energy Strategy
Labour Green Energy Strategy
This week the Labour Party launched its new Green Energy Strategy on Monday 19 June. The ambitious plan aims to shift the UK out of fossil fuels and onto 100% clean energy by 2030. To do this the party would ensure there is no new North Sea oil and gas exploration; lift the ban on onshore wind; develop a home-grown industry to build offshore wind turbines; ensure the profits from clean energy projects like solar and wind go back into the local communities that house them; create a new national wealth fund and a new UK wide publicly owned green energy company based in Scotland, along with various other policies. Labour believe their plan will create half a million new green jobs. However, they have had to go back on their commitment to invest £28 billion a year in clean energy as it is currently unaffordable.[1] The strategy is widely seen as Labour’s response to the American Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Biden administration last year, that will inject $500 billion in new spending and tax breaks to boost the clean energy industry in the US, and similar strategies in the EU.
Whilst of course these plans are not perfect, and there is much that could be improved, they do represent a big stride in the right direction towards the kind of ambition needed to truly tackle climate change and rapidly shift to clean renewable energy. They are certainly much more ambitious than the current government’s equivalent Net Zero Strategy published in March. In this week’s Arise weekly blog we go through Labour’s Green Energy Strategy and see how it stacks up.
The urgent need to tackle climate change
Both the current government and the Labour Party are of course right that there is a desperately urgent need for the UK (and indeed every other nation in the world) to tackle climate change. In recent years the impacts of climate change have included heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, wildfires, landslides, massive polar melting, the melting of the world’s glaciers, sea-level rise, the devastation of coral systems, mass food and fresh water shortages, ill health, huge negative economic impacts, conflicts over scarce resources, the creation of huge numbers of climate refugees, and much more. In the past 9 months alone, we have seen a massive and tragic food crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, record temperatures in the UK and Europe, and devastating floods in Pakistan, New Zealand, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all as a result of global climate change. It is developing countries like DR Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Pakistan, whose greenhouse gas emissions are a fraction of those of more developed nations, that have done the least to cause climate change, but are now being hit first and hardest by a changing climate. This is impacting the lives of millions of ordinary people like Aagney from Nepal, who has seen the weather change from when he was a boy, so it is now much hotter in his region, even in winter. He has seen the rains repeatedly fail in recent years devastating the winter barley crop and leaving smog and haze in the air.
As Christians what should we do about it?
As Christians we know we are called both to care for God’s amazing creation, and to love our neighbours, especially the most vulnerable. We read in Genesis how humanity was instructed both to work God’s creation and to “take care of it” (Gen 2: 15). Later the book of Proverbs tells us “The righteous care about justice for the poor” (Prov 29: 7). We therefore need to meet immediate urgent needs for those whose lives have already been devastated by climate change. And we also need to tackle the long-term underlying causes, and urgently get out of fossil fuels which are driving global climate change, and instead shift to 100% clean renewable energy, which does not lead to climate change, and is cheaper as well.
Four Shifts
A major piece of research from Arise, the 4 Shifts Report, looks at what the Bible teaches us and the lessons from history about how we can rewire our global economy to be green and fair, so it still creates the jobs and wealth that lift people out of poverty, but does so without relying on fossil fuels and overconsumption which is wrecking our planet. Four Shifts economics captures the two great shifts that the world needs to secure a safe environmental ceiling that keeps us well within planetary boundaries: from polluting fossil fuels to renewable clean energy, and from overconsumption and waste to a circular economy that eliminates all waste and re-uses resources. It then holds them together with the two great shifts on development that are necessary for guaranteeing the social floor, which lifts all out of poverty and below which no one should be allowed to fall: strong and fair economies from which nations can tax and provide social spending to meet basic needs.
Assessing Labour’s Green Energy Strategy
Labour’s Green Energy Strategy addresses the first of these great shifts, from polluting fossil fuels to clean energy. The plans to shift to clean energy by 2030, to ensure there is no new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and to lift the ban on onshore wind all match the kind of ambition Arise calls for in the 4 Shifts Report. Every nation should rapidly scale down the use of fossil fuels to absolute zero emissions and scale up clean renewable energy to 100% by 2030, banning all fossil fuels from this date. Arise believe this would need to be implemented in every sector: energy, transport, buildings, industry etc. It will need to be rolled out through multiple policies, such as an immediate ban on coal-fired power plants and all other new fossil fuel production, and using quotas and targets to rapidly scale down oil and gas use. It would further mean massively supporting solar, wind, hydropower, tidal, wave and ocean current driven energy as the clean renewable energy alternatives that are also far cheaper and quicker to scale up. Government should ensure renewable energy is generated in a local decentralised manner, so energy is immediately and locally available. They should also update all energy grids to become ‘smart grids’, so they use modern digital technology and real time information to predict and detect energy demands, and direct energy flows to the most needed areas when they are required, minimising wastage and maximising efficiency.
In other areas, the government should immediately ban the construction of new cars, trucks, lorries and trains which use fossil fuels, since electric alternatives are already available. They should also rapidly phase out the remaining fossil fuel cars, trucks, trains and lorries, whilst providing a heavily subsidised package to support any of the public still using petrol vehicles to upgrade to electric alternatives. Additional investment should be made in the national infrastructure to support these alternatives, such as the widespread availability of charge points for cars and wires and rails for electric trains. A national programme to completely convert existing building stock to use clean energy generated electricity for heating/hot water/cooking should be launched. Across all sectors the maximum possible energy efficiency and emissions standards should be applied to minimise waste, leakage and the amount of power used. These and other similar policies would enable the UK to hit that revised 2030 target (4 Shifts Report, pg 102 – 112).
As Labour’s Green Energy Strategy also recognises, achieving such a shift requires significant investment, both public and private. This has the potential for huge economic (as well as environmental) gains in terms of the creation of large numbers of green jobs. As such, Labour policies to develop a home-grown industry to build offshore wind turbines; ensure the profits from clean energy projects like solar and wind go back into the local communities that house them; create a new national wealth fund and a new UK wide publicly owned green energy company based in Scotland; and create half a million new green jobs, are again all to be welcomed and align well with the findings of Arise’s 4 Shifts Report. Indeed this whole approach (like the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act) speaks of a modern constructive partnership between government and the private sector that sees important roles for public spending, legislation, and economic and industrial strategy, alongside private sector investment, innovation and scale, working in partnership to deliver the transformation required.
This very much reflects the kind of partnership that the 4 Shifts Report finds has been essential in every country that has developed a strong and fair economy. It has a much better success rate than the more hands off and distant approach to the economy of governments holding to more extreme free market economic ideology (4 Shifts Report, pg 70 – 86). On the other hand, the rolling back of Labour’s commitment to invest £28 billion a year in clean energy is sadly unwelcome and falls well short of what is needed. The 4 Shifts Report calls for every government to significantly invest public funds into research and development to improve and scale up clean energy technology, and tax breaks, subsidies, public procurement and a positive partnership between government and the private sector to boost clean energy production. Other policies should include cutting all fossil fuel subsidies and massively increasing taxes on greenhouse gas emitting forms of energy use. These would all create even larger numbers of well paid, skilled green jobs and boost the national economy (4 Shifts Report, pg 102 – 112).
It is possible
Shifting to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and banning all fossil fuels from this date sounds radical, but it is what the science says is desperately and rapidly needed if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Any delay only makes the cost in both human suffering and cash far greater. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain by acting rapidly now. The UK, and indeed every national economy, needs to be put on a war footing, to take radical and fast measures at scale in order to address the climate crisis with the level of urgency, speed and seriousness that is needed. This is totally possible. We have an excellent example from our very recent history. In 2020 in response to the Covid 19 pandemic, huge public and private funds were invested in vaccine development, enabling vaccines that would usually have taken years or even decades to develop, to be produced in a matter of months, and mass vaccination of the entire population to be rolled out. In addition rapid and radical policies like nation-wide lockdowns and mass testing were introduced. A huge furlough scheme protected jobs, businesses and the national economy. The army was called on for key roles. Whole new hospitals were built within weeks. Core workers were prioritised, protected and supported. And in the midst of all this, the nation came together in solidarity behind the government to respond to a national emergency. That is the kind of ambition and rapid action that we need in the UK and every nation.
It’s good that the Labour Party has moved a long way in adopting a lot of the right policies to tackle climate change and rapidly shift to clean energy. But this should not be a party political issue. There should be a cross party consensus of all parties, and indeed all governments around the world, that this is the kind of ambition we need to address climate change. It is possible. We have done it before, and we can absolutely do it again.
Find out more
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Find out more about why the world needs 4 Shifts to transition to a fair and green global economy in Arise’s 4 Shifts Report, and how this forms part of God’s bigger vision for our world in the Arise Manifesto.
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[1] Sir Keir Starmer sets out Labour’s green energy strategy, BBC, (19 June 2023), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-65949150