UK Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer made a pitch to Scottish voters, vowing to create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs as he unveiled plans to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” by 2030.
(Bloomberg) — UK Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer made a pitch to Scottish voters, vowing to create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs as he unveiled plans to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” by 2030.
Britain’s main opposition party will set up a public clean energy generation company, Great British Energy, in Scotland as part of plans that aim to create half a million jobs in the UK, including 50,000 north of the border, Starmer said on Monday in a speech in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.
Starmer is trying to burnish his party’s green credentials while at the same time taking advantage of a drop in support for the Scottish National Party following an accounting scandal. Labour leads Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives by a double-digit in the polls, and the SNP’s woes gives Starmer the opportunity to take upward of 20 seats north of the border that could be crucial in his bid to become prime minister in a general election that’s widely expected next year.
With that in mind, his party has damped down in recent weeks its opposition to new oil and gas developments in the North Sea — an industry which sustains thousands of Scottish jobs. Starmer said that any existing oil and gas licenses issued before a Labour government takes power will be respected as they move toward development.
He promised no “cliff edges” for workers in the oil and gas sector, instead promising to protect jobs in the transition to clean energy and learn from the destruction of the UK mining industry in the 1980s. But he also said clean energy needs to be ratcheted up in the meantime.
Onshore Wind
“If we wait until North Sea oil and gas runs out, the opportunities this change can bring for Scotland and your community will pass us by, and that would be a historic mistake,” Starmer said.
Opposition proposals include lifting a ban on new onshore wind farms within months of taking office and cutting the time taken to complete clean power projects from years to months with “tough new targets.”
The goals reiterate promises that both Labour and Conservative governments alike have made and failed to keep since the turn of the century. Business leaders complain that planning rules and bureaucracy are holding back investment, especially in critical green technologies like wind farms, electric-car battery plants and carbon capture facilities.
Under Labour’s plan, a new National Wealth Fund will invest alongside the private sector in renewable energy projects and infrastructure, helping ultimately to cut energy bills and shore up energy security, Starmer said.
Starmer said his party would reform planning rules to stop so-called nimbyism blocking projects. He told BBC radio that he wanted local people to benefit from new projects through cheaper bills and investments by developers in local improvements.
“We have to have a mechanism where we can move forward,” Starmer told the BBC. There can’t be “individual vetoes all across the country,” he said.
Scaling Back
Starmer is also seeking to boost confidence in Labour’s commitment to green energy after the party scaled back a plan to invest £140 billion ($180 billion) over five years on a clean energy transition because of cost concerns. It now seeks to “ramp up” to £28 billion a year, rather than deliver that figure from the beginning of the next parliamentary term.
The original plan fell victim to Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ efforts to show a more fiscally conservative face to voters.
Labour’s plans also promise Britain will run on 100% clean power by 2030, a target that Phil Thompson, chief executive of clean energy developer Balance Power Group Ltd. said earlier this month is “impossible.”
“It’s a case of shoot for the stars, but I think technically it’s not achievable unless someone has got a magic wand,” he said.
But Starmer said on Monday “we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and start building things, run towards the barriers” including planning rules, skills shortages, investor confidence and grid capacity.
“We must find the reforms that can restart our engine,” he said. “I’m not going to accept a situation where our planning system means it takes 13 years to build an offshore wind farm.”
Labour also needs to make sure its backers in the unions are on board with its plans and there have already been signs of disquiet. Unions want to make sure fossil fuel jobs aren’t destroyed before enough new ones are created.
Read more: Labour’s Starmer Defends UK Energy Plan After Union Critique
Labour, which has a double-digit lead in opinion polls over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, is hoping a strong climate policy will help it win votes at the next election. A vote, due by January 2025, is widely expected to be held next year. The party used to dominate in Scotland, taking 41 of its 59 parliamentary seats as recently as 2010.
But the SNP’s rise under Nicola Sturgeon — the party took 56 seats in 2015 and still held 48 in 2019 — has been a major stumbling bloc to its electoral ambitions. However, Sturgeon stepped down earlier this year, and was recently arrested as part of a police probe into the SNP’s finances. While she was released without charge, Labour has been steadily making up ground on the nationalists in polling north of the border. A Savanta poll last week found Labour would win 21 new seats in Scotland and defend their sole existing constituency in a general election.
–With assistance from Joe Mayes and Andrew Atkinson.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.