Keir Starmer, party leader of the Labour Party is being urged to more than double Labour’s investment in publicly owned renewable energy to save consumers billions of pounds on their bills, despite the party drastically scaling back its plans last week.
In an intervention after the Labour leader scrapped the party’s £28bn green investment pledge in the most controversial U-turn of his leadership, the Common Wealth thinktank said that a step-change in government backing for clean energy generation was still required.
It said that plans to retain an initial cash injection in Great British Energy – a state-owned renewable power generation company planned if Labour is elected to power – was an important “down payment”, but should be increased to £30bn over the course of a first term in office.
There have been growing questions over Labour’s target to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030 after it slashed the funding package behind its green economy plans by half.
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As a key group influencing Ed Miliband, the shadow net zero secretary, Common Wealth was said to be the first thinktank to promote a new publicly owned energy generator – providing backing for GB Energy – based on similar European firms such as Sweden’s Vattenfall, Denmark’s Ørsted and Norway’s Equinor.
Miliband is also understood to have pushed back against the dilution of Labour’s £28bn investment plan, with speculation – denied by his team – that he could resign over the issue. However, in a sign of unity, he contributed a quote to the press release confirming it would be scaled back.
Labour has said GB Energy would be headquartered in Scotland as a “homegrown, publicly owned champion in clean energy generation” to enable the creation of jobs and manufacturing in Britain’s renewables sector. However, several details remain unclear, including whether it would operate green assets directly or control a portfolio of investments in other companies instead.
Labour said last week that GB Energy would “partner with industry” and “co-invest” in groundbreaking green technologies such as floating offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and tidal stream energy.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
