A Labour government would not only lift the de facto ban on onshore wind farms in England but also force councils to “proactively identify” areas suitable for renewable generation, leader Sir Keir Starmer has announced.
Asked what would happen if a community did not want new onshore wind or solar power plants, Starmer told the BBC on Monday: “We have to have a mechanism where we can move forward.
“Otherwise you get to a situation where everybody says ‘there ought to be more renewables . . . but I just don’t want it near me’. We have to have a situation where we can resolve that.”
The Labour leader is in Edinburgh on Monday to announce a package of green policies that his party would adopt if it wins the general election, which is expected next year.
Labour had previously intended to borrow £28bn a year to spend on the transition to a net zero emissions economy but earlier this month said the figure would not be reached until halfway through the next five-year parliament.
Starmer has also announced that a proposed state-owned energy company called Great British Energy will be based in Scotland under a Labour government.
The party leader will on Monday emphasise how renewable energy projects could produce revenue that local authorities could use to cut council tax or invest in improving public services.
He has promised to use the net zero strategy to deliver investment “in the UK’s industrial heartlands”, in line with similar debt-fuelled green plans from US president Joe Biden.
“The whole world knows that the future of power is bound up with renewables,” he told the Radio 4 Today programme. “Look at what’s happening in America with the Inflation Reduction Act — it’s like a magnet for business and for investment. We can’t sit this out.”
Labour has committed to a target of Britain producing all of its electricity from low-carbon sources — such as nuclear, solar and wind — by 2030, an ambition seen as over-optimistic by many senior industry figures.
“That [target] will put us ahead of the world in developed economies, that is a massive plan,” he said. “Nobody in the sector is saying it’s not ambitious enough, if anything they are saying ‘it’s just about doable Keir but we’d have to work hard . . . and you’re going to have to take some tough decisions in relation to planning and the grid.”
The Labour leadership has faced a backlash from the oil industry and some trade unions for its pledge, first announced in November 2022, to stop granting new licences for the development of North Sea oil and gasfields.
However, under the policy Labour would not cancel existing licences in place at the time of the election. “Oil and gas will be part of the mix for decades to come under existing licences or licences that are granted in the near future,” Starmer said.
Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned energy company, is expecting approval for its Rosebank oilfield within weeks.
David Whitehouse, chief executive of Offshore Energies, a body representing the UK offshore energies industry, told the BBC that the Labour plan would “create a cliff edge” for businesses, given that 180 of the North Sea’s active 283 fields are due to close by 2030.
But Philip Evans, a campaigner for Greenpeace, said the idea that ending new licences would “lead to an overnight shutdown of the industry” was merely a “scare story”.
“Otherwise you get to a situation where everybody says ‘there ought to be more renewables . . . but I just don’t want it near me’. We have to have a situation where we can resolve that.”
He is right to address NIMBYism. This is probably the biggest barrier green energy faces in this country, bar the fossil fuel industry. I think once that door has been kicked down it will be much easier to bring in more changes.
Side note, why aren’t we talking about subsidising solar? The gov could subsidise it for new builds and which would ease up pressure on existing energy infrastructure and save money in the long haul. Seems like low hanging fruit to me.
Yeah I agree - subsidising solar and also subsidising heat pump conversions and insulation for for older properties are essential parts of the mix. These would be impactful on energy generation / energy saving, and in removing our reliance on gas for heating.
I think if local people could benefit from the cheap power the wind turbines generate there’d be far less opposition. Either give locals a discount on their bills, or give them a small shareholding in the company that sells the power to the grid. You’d have people begging for wind farms!
I’d be for it.
But until you’ve seen it, it’s hard to believe how vehemently opposed to wind turbines some people are.
You could tell them the world will actually be engulfed in flames 2 weeks from now if they don’t allow a single wind turbine in a field, several miles from their house, completely out of view, and they would still bombard the council with complaints.
The only retort they have is that they are ugly, which I completely disagree with as well. I find them quite appealing. But compared to a coal power plant gushing smog into the atmosphere…
My issue with wind has nothing to do with what they look like and everything to do with the fact that wind energy is just gas with extra steps. If you build a wind farm you still need a way to generate electricity when the wind isn’t blowing because wind is non-dispatchable and has shit capacity factor. The only realistic option for dispatchable backup supply for wind is gas, which is why the oil and gas companies are so keen to push wind over things like nuclear.
You’ve actually been mislead - it’s 100% possible and feasible for a 100% renewable energy supply - a mix of hydro, wind, solar and wave power with energy storage methods (such as pumped storage or molten salt) makes it entirely possible with today’s technology.
Nuclear power is comparatively expensive and also, with our current technology, it is also limited. There is no benefits that nuclear power holds over renewables.
Ah yes, the nebulous “energy storage methods” makes it’s appearance. Pumped hydro is great, but we aren’t exactly flush with vast areas of waste land we can flood.
It’s all possible in theory but in reality it’s not if we opt for a nuclear-based grid it’s when. You cite the cost of nuclear, but ignore the cost of storage when evaluating renewables and also I suspect fail to appreciate that more than half the cost of UK nuclear is in the financing costs and interest payments. Hinkley C would have been literally half the price if it’d been funded by government borrowing, and wind is more than double it’s stated cost once you account for the need for dispatchable backup or storage.
Ultimately renewables like wind and solar have nothing to add to a nuclear-based grid because they’re non-dispatchable. The only ones which may have some value are hydro and tidal, both of which I fully support. Nuclear is also not limited in any practical sense for a country like the UK. Is it a solution for the whole world? No. Is it the solution for a small geologically stable nuclear-armed island nation in the 48-49th parallel? Absolutely.
Look, I’m just trying to help you get informed, if you want to stay ignorant, that’s your business. I’m not going to argue with you, but I’ll give you this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
And this quote:
The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
Whether you want to continue supporting nuclear for no good reason or join me in the 21st century is up to you.
The energy prices is different and separate problem, almost entirely caused by the privatisation of power production and distribution by Thatcher’s conservative government in the 80s. We could solve that problem by re-nationalising them.
It’s because solar, and domestic solar in particular is poor value for money in terms of reducing emissions.
You got some source for that? The payback time of home solar is constantly coming down, so it will be more and more a thing just because of economics. I know someone who is closing in on basically being independent of the grid in summer. Local generation, avoid grid load, must help nationally. Especially since the grid is struggling to onboard all the renewable already built.
We have a 20 panel home solar system, with 10kWh of battery storage. Most days we don’t use any external power. In summer we’re exporting 20-25kWh per day into the grid. Payback will be around 6yrs, equivalent to earning 15% interest on the money we invested (£14k 'ish).
Finally some good policies from Starmer’s Labour party. (He’s clearly trying to steal the Green party voters, but if he can get those things done then it doesn’t matter which party did them).
We have the technology, it already exists and is in many cases clearly superior in terms of efficiency and running cost to the non-renewable method. It just needs to be built, and he’s correct that NIMBY councils are one of the biggest reasons why it hasn’t been built yet.
An optimistic part of me wonders that now the cons are imploding, labour has been able to step away from the “attract blue voters” policy, and move torwards “attract green voters”, since a hefty chunk of blue ones are in the bag now.
I think this sounds reasonable.
Very probably too little, too late, but hey ho.
It’s not too late to make money. Now that the ROCCs are gone, we can have even more foreign businesses (rather than small local communities) generating on our land while contributing minimal amounts to local economies!
But at least it’s better than all the STOR projects hidden behind tall wooden fences, burning gas or diesel in small amounts, spread all over the country. That’s what we’ve been replacing big coal reactors with these last few years…
I work very closely in renewables. The state in England is laughable, far too much NIMBY. They installed a turbine at Avonmouth, celebrate it as the biggest onshore yet, but it’s tiny compared to Scotland.
However, it must be said that these are all commercial enterprises. They don’t exist to be green, they are private businesses that exist to make money.
Aside from places like Awel Aman Tawe. That was a nice community funded twin turbine windfarm where all the money went to the local community. They had a local rugby player kick a ball over the blades to open it, and they have school groups visit with this janky exercise bike that kids can peddle to light a bulb or charge their phone.
But the rest of them are all about money. They should pay back more to community. They shouldn’t be used as a selling point so you can pay more for your electricity while the provider is in fact paying less by getting the cheapest energy produced on the market.
The disassociation between generation and consumption in commercial markets only means that end users pay far more than they should.
That’s capitalism though isn’t it? All electricity generation exists in order to make money
Indeed it does. And in fact, renewable generation is some of the cheapest on the generation market - it is highly competitive while still being insanely profitable (fuel is by far the biggest cost over the total life of a traditional generator, and renewables have no fuel cost). My biggest issue is that this is not reflected at all in the consumer market - all of the savings is taken away from the consumer, who continues to pay ever increasing prices.
We do have a lot of catching up to do wrt onshore wind.
I think the plans should include helping people green their home. If every building had solar, the grid’s demands would reduce significantly. If every building was well insulated, less heating, thus gas, would be used. Heap pumps are wasted on buildings with poor insulation. It can’t be aimed at new builds as we have mostly old housing stock, so retrofitting must be targeted too.
