Labour spending boost to benefit community power projects

Transport, school buildings and community power projects are some of the areas that could benefit from Labour’s plans to increase net zero investment, Ed Miliband has revealed.

The shadow energy secretary of state outlined how the opposition plans to spend its plans to boost net zero investment to £28 billion during the next Parliament, at a net zero conference in London this week.

Alongside Labour’s previously stated commitments to boost investment in home insulation and support for industrial decarbonisation, he said the party would look at other areas like school buildings and transport, which have implications for the push to net zero emissions.

And Miliband said that while the investment needs of mature renewables technologies, like wind, could largely be met from the private sector, there will be a case for its new state-owned Great British Energy company to put money into community energy projects.

As well as contributing to a reduction in pressures on the grid, these grassroots projects could also help to win community consent for renewable energy, he said.

While saying that Labour had been partially forced into scaling back its net zero investment plans following last autumn’s “disastrous” mini budget, the ex-energy and climate change secretary defended the level of spending that the opposition is proposing.

“In anyone’s language to get into £28bn per year in the second half of the Parliament is a large amount of money, a significant sum.”

He also told the audience at the Institute of Government thinktank that Labour will have to hit the ground running in order to achieve its goals on decarbonisation, which include a net zero grid by 2030.

“The department of which I am secretary of state is going to have an absolutely massive delivery challenge. That’s why we’re working to be day one ready so we can do what this government has failed to do.

“If Labour wins the election, in this area almost more than any other, we won’t have the luxury of saying we can sit around. We’re going have to be day one ready.”

Miliband said the opposition would unveil more details of its approach to the grid, as well as net zero supply chain and skills, before the next general election, which must take place by the end of 2024.

However he said that the push to decarbonise the power sector would benefit from the backing of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer if Labour forms the next government following commitments by Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on the issue.

“There are examples from around the world of how if the government has political will, it can make things happen,” he said, pointing to Germany’s rapid roll out last year of LNG (liquified natural gas) terminals to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian imports.

“The first thing required is single minded pursuit of this goal but that’s what we intend to have.”

The author of the government’s independent review of net zero, ex-energy minister Chris Skidmore told the same conference that meeting the 2050 goal could not be achieved by Whitehall on its own.

“Net zero will fail if we see it as a top down project in which the government is imposing its will on people and communities,” he said.