Keir Starmer sparked serious misgivings among organisations fighting climate change when, before the elections, he severely cut his commitment to launching a “green economy”. He had announced an investment of more than 33 billion euros. Fiscal prudence, in the face of rampant inflation, led him to reduce this future funding by half (about 17 billion euros). In the first days of government, the measures announced seek to dispel any doubts regarding the firmness of the Labour Party in the battle against global warming.
At the head of the team responsible for achieving the goal of generating carbon-free electricity by 2030 is the new Minister for Energy Security, Ed Milliband. His personal career bears some resemblance to that of the US vice-president and failed presidential candidate, Al Gore. Milliband, who has always belonged to the left wing of the party, was a failure as Labour leader (2010-2015), but has an established reputation in the climate fight. He was already Minister for Energy and Climate Change under the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in 2008. His 2008 Climate Change Agenda, which raised the UK’s emissions reduction targets by 2050 from 60% to 80%, was already a small revolution at the time.
Every election programme is, by definition, ambitious. It is another matter whether it is realistic. Starmer’s Labour party, which is pursuing a “national renewal” of the country with a series of reforms to boost economic growth, is placing particular emphasis on renewable energy. It aims to double the number of onshore wind farms, triple solar power plants and quadruple floating offshore wind installations. 650,000 new jobs are envisaged in the Green Prosperity Plan, which aims to turn the UK into a “green energy superpower”.
The great promise of the Labour Party, which it has been working on for the last two years, will be the creation of a new public energy company, Great British Energywhich will make real reductions in gas and electricity bills possible. Starmer and his finance minister, Rachel Reeves, say they can persuade private industry and trade unions to join forces on a project that will facilitate investment in new technologies and allow local energy production. The new government has pledged to inject almost €10 billion into the new company.
The first measures
The great obstacle of previous governments to develop new renewable energy facilities – wind or solar farms – has been the so-called nimbysThe word comes from the acronym NIMBY (Not In My BackyardNot In My Backyard), and refers to all those citizens who support green energy, as long as it does not affect the landscape around them.
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Starmer and his team are set to drastically change UK urban and infrastructure planning laws, which give property owners an exaggerated say and influence over future public projects, whether it be the construction of windmills or social housing.
The previous minister, Michael Gove, imposed on developers of new wind farms the obligation to demonstrate that they had the support of the affected community, in case the facilities were not already included in local urban development plans. Although the measure sought, paradoxically, to weaken the ban de facto that the previous conservative government of David Cameron imposed on the construction of new power stations, to court the vote tory In the south of England, the effect was the opposite. Any voice against a new project managed to paralyse it.
Milliband’s team scrapped the measure in his first days in charge of the department. “All families have paid the price for this veto power, with much higher energy bills (…) and it has slowed down our fight against climate change,” said the new minister, who has the enthusiastic backing of the renewable energy industry and non-governmental organisations.
“Last April, studies conducted by Friends of Earth (Friends of the Earth) have shown that using less than 3% of England’s land devoted to wind or solar energy could produce up to thirteen times more clean energy than is currently produced. That’s enough to cover up to twice the needs of all English households,” said Mike Childs, the director of Research, Science and Public Policy at the organisation.
Milliband has also given the green light to the construction of three new solar plants in the region of the Midlands (Midlands) of England, which will cover an area of almost 30 square kilometres and could supply the needs of 400,000 homes. The decision to allow these projects to be carried out had been shelved in the ministry for months.
The new Labour government will reveal in detail much of its climate change plans during the parliamentary term on Wednesday in the so-called King’s Speech. Charles III will read out Starmer’s legislative programme to Parliament at the opening ceremony of the new session.
Much of the climate impetus of the new political era that the United Kingdom is opening up to has to do, not so much with all the plans and projects announced, but with the demolition of the energy strategy of the previous Conservative Government of Rishi Sunak, which led to a retreat from many of the previous commitments in the fight against global warming.
In December 2022, Downing Street granted West Cumbria Mining permission to open a coal mine in Cumbria, the first to be developed in the country in 30 years. Clinging to the precedent set by the UK Supreme Court a month ago, which halted oil exploration in Surrey because “the climate impact of using more fossil fuels had not been considered”, Starmer’s government has given up on fighting two legal challenges against the new mine from two NGOs. This is the most obvious way of making it clear that Downing Street no longer supports the project, which will eventually be abandoned.
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