A well-intentioned but badly designed and poorly communicated energy policy from the German government, and more recent protests by farmers in France and the Netherlands, have knocked the confidence of European political leaders that environmental progress can be delivered in a way that works for people and enjoys democratic support. Unashamedly popular climate policies from Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband offer the chance to reshape European climate politics and confound these sceptics.
Showing climate delivery can be done fairly, effectively, affordably and with strong public support would be an extraordinary climate legacy for Starmer. It would build on Britain’s relatively strong record of having halved its climate footprint already, and it would offer hope amid all the gloom.
Encouragingly, Starmer’s team has wasted no time in demonstrating it is keen to get stuck into the green mission it has made one of its top priorities, and in doing so it’s proving that it isn’t afraid of its own shadow on this agenda. Its first law changes have involved setting up GB Energy and pushing through planning reforms to get more clean energy built. The first planning decisions of the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the planning minister, Matthew Pennycook, have been to unlock masses of new solar and wind projects and to recognise the importance of Cornwall’s lithium deposits.
An early decision from Reeves was to raise the budget for new clean energy projects by half a billion pounds resulting in a huge pipeline of new green energy projects, which will also see a big injection of private investment and new jobs in every corner of the country. This will bolster the government’s mission of driving up economic growth, and unlock more money for the NHS. The first speech of the new foreign secretary, David Lammy, has been focused on taking this agenda global with a new Clean Power Alliance of countries working together to unlock the raw materials and finance required to make practical progress. Together with the environment secretary, Steve Reed, he is also pushing the significance of protecting nature up the agenda before a major global summit in the Amazon next year.
Taken together, all this activity over the first weeks of the government (not to mention Miliband’s social media outputs) projects a confidence that its approach to the green agenda is on solid political ground. It is surely justified. Not only did Starmer win his historic landslide majority having spelled out to voters what his bold climate agenda would be, but survey work since the election shows he continues to enjoy a strong public mandate for it.
That Conservative leadership contenders are largely hiding their ever-hardening scepticism towards net zero suggests they have internalised the polling data showing how out of sync they are with voters on this. As Sam Hall has argued, for Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, to stand out amid the Tory bloodbath (after his focus on delivering green growth) should surely show them this is an agenda that can deliver an electoral dividend for those who lean in to it. Recent research by Starmer’s former policy chief, Claire Ainsley, reached the same conclusion.
Despite the relentless criticism of Miliband’s efforts in some quarters of the media, recent work by More in Common shows the public as a whole are now three times more likely to think that renewable power will bring their energy bills down than to think fossil fuels will. Expert analysts (including the Aurora consultancy, perhaps the Tories’ favourite energy policy shop) say the public are correct in holding this view.
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Equally, the outcome of the recent auction process for procuring new energy generation also showed renewable energy projects still coming in at a comparable cost to the dirty alternative. By 2030, consumers should be feeling financial benefits from this green boom. The alternative would leave families and businesses exposed to the kind of gas price shocks that have caused so much financial misery in the past couple of years. The Office for Budget Responsibility last week sounded the alarm over the massive costs that would also be associated with worsening extreme weather unless leaders grip the climate challenge.
A Labour official told Politico: “We will govern with policies focused on showing how net zero will make you better off.” All the new clean power can help with this, but whether Labour succeeds in managing the transition well will largely be determined by the chancellor’s spending review decisions. How she decides to balance the upfront cost of energy infrastructure investment will, more than anything, determine who will pay what, and whether voters consider that a fair and reasonable approach. If Reeves gets this right, she, Starmer and Miliband could forge the model for other governments across Europe to deal with the climate challenge too.
Having cut the winter fuel payment, Reeves now has the opportunity to target a permanent cut to energy bills for pensioners by carefully targeting the extra £6bn for insulating five million homes Labour’s manifesto promised to invest over the next five years. You could even call it an end to sticking-plaster solutions.
Conservative chancellors historically loaded most of the cost of new energy investment on to household energy bills, whereas Reeves has previously signalled she wants to have big oil and gas firms pay more towards the transition. Former Miliband aide Sam Alvis has suggested some options available to her for reducing further what’s paid from bills, and the Resolution Foundation has outlined possible reforms to the tax system that could raise some of the necessary revenues to do this.
Days before taking office, Starmer gave an instructive interview pledging his government would respond to public cynicism about politics by offering something “credible, realisable, not some fantastical hope that isn’t going to happen”. Time and again he has signalled we should expect strategies across the board to be defined by practicality not posturing. As he heads off to the UN in New York this week for discussions with other world leaders on climate and other security threats, he should explain how he will extend this philosophy to cutting carbon. It offers him the best opportunity to define an international legacy on the issue.
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Joss Garman is executive director of the European Climate Foundation
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