‘Bigger than Brexit’: Is Labour’s net-zero plan viable?

Labour members’ backing of a motion setting the new net-zero target of 2030 was somewhat buried in a political avalanche last week but if the party were to form a government it could prove hugely significant. The target is certainly ambitious but is it achievable? David Blackman investigates.

Depending on your point of view, it was either the day that Labour checked out of political reality or the point that the party faced up to the existential crisis threatening humanity.

The day in question was last Tuesday. While the nation reeled from the Supreme Court’s ruling that the government’s suspension of Parliament had been unlawful, earnest delegates at the Labour party conference debated a motion committing the party to cut emissions to net zero by 2030 – a full two decades earlier than the target set by the government earlier this year.

The adoption of the motion, which also called for nationalisation of the big six suppliers and a mass insulation retrofit programme for the UK’s housing stock among other measures, was passed by an overwhelming majority.

Labour’s backing marks a remarkable achievement for its Green New Deal campaign, which was only launched a few months ago.

However, many worry that the party’s commitment lacks credibility.

These include GMB union, representing many workers in the gas and nuclear industries, which put up a stiff fight against putting the 2030 target to a vote.

The union, one of Labour’s biggest paymasters, backed an alternative motion that stopped short of setting the end of next decade as the target date.

GMB general secretary Tim Roach was forthright in his concern that 2030 is too soon a target, arguing that it is not backed up by a concrete plan.

“That is what will convince people. It is what will ensure we can manage this process in an orderly and just transition that does not shut down industries and harm communities in the way that we saw in the 1980s.

“Action on climate change matters too much to promise something that cannot be delivered.

“Nobody thinks 2030 is a remotely achievable deadline. There is no conceivable pathway to 2030.

“To reach this target by 2030 work would have had to have started ten years ago – it wasn’t.”

Roach’s concerns were echoed by Lord Deben, chairman of the Committee on Climate Change.

Speaking at Utility Week’s New Deal for Utilities debate, he said: “Saying you’re going to achieve net-zero by 2030 is very easy until you work out how you’re going to do it. The truth is we were looking at things like the availability of battery and what needs to be done to get to the net-zero target and we came to 2050 as the only answer within the technology we have available that was realistic.”

Even Sue Hayman, Labour’s own environment secretary of start, described the target as “quite challenging” at a Labour conference meeting organised by the Nuclear Industries Association.

Peter McIntosh, national officer for energy for the union Unite, went further by telling the same meeting that Labour’s 2030 aspiration was “very, very challenging.”

National emergency

The party’s commitment to renationalise the energy sector, which the motion expanded out to suppliers as well as the networks, will make even existing decarbonisation targets harder to achieve, according to a report published last weekend.

The research report, carried out by consultancy Frontier Economics for the Energy Networks Association, warns that reversing privatisation creates a ‘very significant risk’ of resulting in higher costs and delays.

The analysis of Labour’s blueprint for restoring public ownership of the energy system says it will result in delays, potentially disrupt innovation, result in funding uncertainty and create a more geographically fragmented and less efficient sector that could lead to a postcode lottery in terms of costs and reliability.

It goes on to say: “Taking the networks back into public ownership creates clear risks in respect of the efficient delivery of net zero on time. The lessons of the past suggest that such a move would be likely to hamper delivery.

“Seemingly modest delays can make achieving net zero far more challenging, increase, costs and delay the achievement of benefits.”

Energy UK, in its response to Labour’s Green New Deal vote, pointed to the necessity of harnessing private investment to meeting net zero.

The party doubled down on its public ownership pledge last week with Rebecca Long Bailey, shadow business and energy secretary, making a commitment that it would roll out a new fleet of majority public owned offshore wind farms.

Referring to this pledge, one energy network source said: “It’s obviously a concern because we don’t want any delay in the output of renewables.”

Keeping the pressure up

Lisa Nandy, shadow energy and climate change secretary under Ed Miliband, admitted to “mixed feelings” about her party’s adoption of the headline 2030 target.

“I’m not sure if we have the plans in place to meet the 2050 target,” she said.

But the Wigan MP welcomed the new target because it recognises the urgency of the issue and pushes it up the party’s list of priorities

“We have to seize this moment and do our best with it,” she said, seizing on the party’s pledge to dish out 500,000 interest free loans for electric car purchase as  a positive step.

Nevertheless she is concerned that the climate change issue has the potential to become a new dividing line in society.

“With climate change I’m really worried that it’s becoming a culture war in the way Brexit has, polarising into those who are for and those against.

“We cannot afford for that to happen: for some people that means getting real about the scale of the risk and the need for a transition that is as sweeping and rapid as possible.”

But it also means being sensitive towards the concerns of those communities which have traditionally relied on fossil fuel extraction, like coal mining, she added.

“We’ve got to get serious about the need to take people with us and turn this into a positive agenda or we are not going to win.”

While expressing pride in the last Labour government’s passage of the 2008 Climate Change Act, she said that since then policies had loaded the cost of cutting emissions onto the shoulders of the poorest in society.

“We have to think seriously about how to cut emissions in a strategic way. There’s no point telling people in Wigan to get out of their cars if the bus network has been cut back: many of my constituents have no option.”

On the wrong path

Clive Lewis, who oversees environmental policy within Labour’s shadow ministerial team, agreed that social strife is a potential pitfall.

“This issue has potential to be one of the dividing lines in the Labour movement. We have to do all we can to bring forward all parts of our movement on the road to ensure we are on the front foot on this issue.”

But the lesson from the climate science is that 2030 is the right goal to aim at, he said: “We are already on the wrong path and underestimating what we need to do and we are already concerned about the catch up we need to enable,”

However, the chances of Labour being able to implement its green goals look small judging by the current state of the opinion polls in which the opposition party has recently struggled to keep ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

And the trouble is that, with Parliament paralysed, getting any kind of national conversation going will be fraught with challenges.

Sharon Darcy, director of Sustainability First, said: “We need to have a national conversation and some clarity.

“If we are going to meet net-zero goals, we need to work together far more collaboratively than in the past. Part of the problem is there is a policy vacuum. “

Politicians may have signed up to 2050 but nobody has devised what the pathways and intermediate milestones towards achieving even this goa let alone Labour’s more ambitious target, Darcy said: “If there continues to be a political vacuum, we need to have things like citizens assemblies.”

Tackling climate change means that Labour will have to abandon its traditionally tribal approach to politics and forge alliances with other parties, said Nandy: “This means leaving aside differences and finding common cause with other political parties on this agenda. (Green Party MP) Caroline Lucas is an ally on this rather than an enemy. This will take broadest coalition.

“Now we need a plan, this is bigger than Brexit this is about the future of the planet.”