Starmer risks losing support for fighting climate change
By Paul Homewood
The general election is now dominating our national life, generating wall-to-wall media coverage. But while dramas such as Nigel Farage’s decision to stand in Clacton, Rishi Sunak’s D-Day blunder and the first two television debates dominate the headlines, far less noticed was Labour’s energy policy announcement.
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer pledged to turn Britain into an “energy superpower … by scaling up renewables”. That would “close the door on Putin”, he said, “so Britain won’t be reliant on Russia or other foreign suppliers”.
Labour has pledged to create Great British Energy, a Scottish-based state-owned company that will invest in renewables.
The party’s “green prosperity plan” will be funded, said Starmer, by a further toughening of the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas operators.
Central to the party’s plan are “cheap renewables” – with senior figures not only in Labour, but across all the main parties, repeatedly insisting that wind, solar and other renewable energy sources are far less expensive than other fuel sources.
But that’s not true.
Yes, once built, renewables have low running costs, so they should help lower energy bills in the long run. But, before that, the extremely high costs of building offshore wind farms and solar capacity must be paid for – and much of the cost of that, in the UK at least, come from steep network costs and subsidies routinely added to gas and electricity bills on top of wholesale energy costs.
The UK’s energy mix has shifted significantly over recent years. Coal-fired power stations, having generated 40pc of our electricity as recently as 2013, accounted for just 1pc last year.
Wind power has surged to provide 29pc of electricity, with solar and hydro generating another 7pc between them. Throw in biomass energy, and renewables now account for 40pc of electricity generation, the same as coal little more than a decade ago.
That’s a significant shift, with the share of renewables in the UK’s energy mix now around the same as the European Union average.
But our end-user electricity prices are much higher. Households in Spain spent an average of around 21c€/kWh per kilowatt for electricity during the first quarter of this year, with their French counterparts paying just over 30c€/kWh. UK households shelled out considerably more – almost 40 c€/kWh, with similar differentials applying to UK-based companies too.
The race is on to develop renewable energy given that Britain has set itself a legally binding goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, along with interim targets to “decarbonise” our electricity system by 2035. Labour has pledged to bring this latter target forward to 2030.
In February, Labour’s “green prosperity plan” was scaled back in February, from £28bn annually to £5bn a year, as scrutiny of Labour’s broader spending plans intensified. But the party last week pledged to allocate £8.3bn of “initial capital” to GB Energy to fund wind and solar projects.
While there is some logic in the state co-investing alongside the private sector to kick-start emerging technologies, such as floating offshore wind and hydrogen, the dangers of investing in dud or politically driven projects, or the state replacing or even discouraging private investment, are extremely high.
More fundamentally, Great British Energy will do very little to bring down electricity prices – which is essential if the net zero project, already being questioned by more and more voters, is to remain politically viable.
Yes, a large majority of the public want to limit pollution and leave a cleaner world for future generations. But punishing utility bills, to say nothing of the growing pressure to buy expensive electric cars and vans, means lower-income voters, in particular, are becoming increasingly sceptical.
There are two current problems which Labour shows no sign at all of understanding. The first is that because wind and solar power are intermittent – especially during winter when energy demand is high – and because we haven’t solved how to store renewable energy at a cost that makes sense, we need other sources to maintain baseload power during the gaps.
For the UK that means gas – and the huge expense of maintaining numerous gas-fired power stations on stand-by as back-up for renewables is a big reason we pay so much for our electricity.
The second mistake, which the Tories have also made, is to disregard the importance of the North Sea when it comes to energy security.
Oil and gas continues to meet no less than 75pc of the UK’s energy needs, once transport is included. And the North Sea provides around four fifths of the oil we use and just over half the gas.
Half of the UK’s 300 active oil/gas fields are due to close by 2030 – and the Tories’ 75pc windfall tax means many potential projects ensuring future supplies now aren’t financially viable.
Cheered on by environmental activists, Labour has promised an even more punitive tax on North Sea energy extraction – which, far from raising money as claimed, could destroy the entire industry. Rather than improving UK energy security, it would cause bills to spiral further and could even cause blackouts.
Political support for tackling climate change, already being challenged, would then take a shattering blow.
Some good points, but Halligan fails to mention the real elephant in the room – renewable energy, whether onshore wind, offshore wind or solar, is still more expensive than gas fired power, even for new projects.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Where are they going to find all the money to decarbonise the grid by 2030? The cost of net zero is already set to be at least £200,000 per family.
Last night’s Scottish election debate:
“we’re going to impose a windfall tax on oil and gas giants who are making record profits and use that money to lower peoples’ bills and invest in the jobs of the future – that would raise £10 billion pounds.” Anas Sanwar from 13:20
There’s your answer. Straight from fantasy land.
Yes, total fantasy. Since our electricity price is now almost the highest in Europe, we’re now the least likely to benefit from “jobs of the future”.
Stacking rocks to build a structure.
by scaling up renewables”. That would “close the door on Putin”, he said, “so Britain won’t be reliant on Russia or other foreign suppliers”.
What an utter sleasbag this worthless over honoured wilful liar is.
Renewables is not the answer to reduce reliance on Russia, a trap that all governments during the last 25 years have willingly fallen into, BUT TO PRODUCE OUR OWN OIL AND GAS. By not even mentioning that the word weasel is lying by omission.
Halligan is quoting Sir Kneeler Flip Flop U-Turn and not stating that himself.
Starmer is the subject of my spleen venting
Halligan would be far more credible if he had bothered to point out that we have huge reserves of gas and oil under our feet, which Private Enterprise were happy to develop entirely at their own cost AND pay obscene levels of taxation for, but were “Banned” (as he boasted) by Potato Ed Davey when Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whilst trousering £18,000 p.a. for “advising” a solar energy company. The “rationale” behind the “ban” was a limit on the “Intensity” of seismicity from fracking to 0.1 (whereas seismicity for Geothermal fracking remains as ‘of concern’ at a level of 4.0. (because logarithmic, 3,160 times as energetic!)
And naturally, there was an absolute (and surely deliberate) failure to properly police “protests” by GangGreen.
Naturally the Blue and Red arse cheeks of the Uniparty trembled with delight at this Yellow ejection from their midst.
Nobody ever comments upon the useful life expectancy of offshore wind turbines. When the 20 year subsidies stop so will the output because of very high maintenance or replacement costs. The North Sea is a very hostile environment for mechanical devices.
Note also that wave energy is also back on the list of promises of technology which will lead us the the Promised “NetZero” Paradise.
Always interesting to dig out my copy of “Zero Carbon Britain 2030 – A New Energy Strategy – The second report of the Zero Carbon Britain project (2009).
368 pages of Bull ordure.
On page 251 we find their section on Wave Power and an exciting chart showing estimated UK annual mean wave power (in kW/m of wave crest) for the UK, but with the brightest bright red bit stretching halfway from the Western Isles to Greenland). They state “The technical potential of wave power in the UK has been estimated by Langley (2009) at 20GW of capacity, providing 57 TWh of electricity a year. Mackay (2009) estimates the theoretical potential at 87.6 TWh, but suggests that, based on expanding the currently deployed technology; this would only provide an estimated 26.3 TWh.
They go on to assume that 28.5 TWh per year would be produced, based on 10 GW of installed capacity.
I think they had better pull their little fingers out. Hundreds of Millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money was thrown at this wonderful idea back in the noughties and current “installed capacity” apparently isn’t even measured in kW. Life expectancy? My guess would be around 6 months. With luck.
Don’t worry, no-one has been criticised, let alone punished, for this farce.
Similarly with tidal power and the Severn Barrage.Schemes were proposed in 1920, 1933, 1944, several during the 1960s, more in the 1970s again in 1981, the latter abandoned when its cost reached £10 bn.
I’m surprised it hasn’t been resurrected again now.
“The party’s “green prosperity plan” will be funded, said Starmer, by a further toughening of the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas operators.
North Sea oil and gas operators are already winding down operations and Labour’s plan to ban any new licences for exploration/drilling will mean the windfall tax take will inevitably fall. There will be no windfall tax from the new GB Energy because it will be run on massive Govt subsidies.
Another classic socialist scheme to spend other peoples money, as the great lady said:
“The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other peoples’ money” (Thatcher)
Not unlike all of Labour’s funding sources, the windfall tax will dwindle away in the same way that private schools will close and non-doms will relocate elsewhere which is why there is great expectation that Robot Reeves has a whole host of tax rises they are keeping quiet about that will strangle the already over-taxed economy.
Because private investors won’t.
And there is that ‘invest’ word. It means handing out cash to Friends of Labour.
Liam Halligan is a GB News regular and is about the only one to point out that for an economy to grow you need cheap energy and that is the last thing the Uniparty fronts intend to deliver. He could go a bit further sometimes and his claim that renewables are cheaper to run once built is open to question and he hasn’t mentioned the grid costs of connecting all this remote generation. He alone seems to grasp that there is no practical method of storing excess generation available.
… his claim that renewables are cheaper to run once built is open to question …
As previously posted by several on this messageboard, the “formal” LCOE figures issued by believers are deeply flawed e.g. no cost elements to reflect backup energy sources for renewables, no cost elements to reflect grid stabilisation for renewables. Other cost elements are also missing.
I believe that interconnection from said renewable to distant grid was another
There was a list created in another thread (abbreviated below) :
1 Back-up.
2 Grid stability.
3 Energy security.
4 Energy storage.
5 Increased risk of supply failure.
6 Connecting dispersed renewable generation sites to the grid.
7 Curtailment
8 Carbon taxes
5 and 6 above need editing to reduce wordage