Making Great Britain a clean energy superpower

‘Making Great Britain a clean energy superpower,’ is one of Labour’s five missions for government. It has ambitious plans to do this: doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind, all by 2030, as well as setting up new institutions and investment bodies to support the transition.

It has certainly hit the ground running over the last couple of weeks. Removing the ban on onshore wind in England, launching the National Wealth Fund, and the inclusion of the Great British Energy Bill in the King’s Speech yesterday all indicate a more muscular approach to energy than the previous government. 

The decision on Friday to consent three solar Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects that had been sitting on the Secretary of State’s desk when Ed Miliband walked in the door is a particularly encouraging statement of intent. The party pledged to, ‘back the builders, not the blockers,’ during the campaign – and the detail of the decision notices for the three projects suggest they mean it, overturning a recommendation to refuse one and pushing for a proportionate consideration of environmental impacts throughout. 

Arguably, though, these are the easy first steps: bringing back onshore wind meant changing two footnotes in the National Planning Policy Framework. It’s less clear currently how Labour proposes to bring forward the scale of new energy generation it’s proposing at the speed that it has set out.  

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill announced yesterday, for example, will, ‘simplify the consenting process for major infrastructure projects.’ But there’s no real detail yet on exactly how the government intends to go about simplifying the consenting process. The previous government said it would do this, after all – and introduced a ‘fast track’ for applications for Development Consent Orders (DCOs) that involves more paperwork for applicants with a minimal acceleration in the consenting process.

If Labour begins to address the features that have led to the bloating of DCO applications, such as by adopting industry recommendations to replace the statutory requirement to consult with a recommendation to do so, then it may make good on its plans to deliver at speed.

If not, then its plans for 2030 look less ambitious and more an attempt to force yet more projects through a system that can’t take them. Industry would be well-advised to engage with Labour to ensure that solutions actually address the factors slowing down planning.

Questions of policy and plan aside, even ambition is welcome. The return of a government which actually appears to want to deliver net zero marks a significant change from the lukewarm sentiment and delayed decisions of the Sunak years – and most of our conversations with clients this week have had a note of optimism we’ve not found for some time.