Why Keir Starmer’s plan to ‘rewire Britain’ is already coming unstuck
Labour’s plan to borrow £28bn a year for the party’s flagship “green prosperity plan” has triggered tensions within Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbench team – and among the energy executives who would have to implement it.
Starmer spent much of last week prevaricating over the plan, drawn up with Ed Miliband, which promises to cut domestic and business energy bills, create 1m jobs and turn the UK into a “clean energy superpower”.
But now the pair face a chorus of questions about whether it is possible.
A central pillar is the pledge to make Britain’s electricity grid zero-carbon by 2030, meaning the removal, or mitigation, of all carbon emissions.
That is a target that many industry insiders say borders on the fanciful.
It is far more ambitious than the Government’s target to accomplish the same goal by 2035 – one which experts already regard as ambitious.
To succeed, Starmer and Miliband will have to cut the planning delays and bureaucracy that have snared previous attempts to go faster.
“Do I think it’s probable? No. Is it technically possible? Yes,” says Tom Glover, UK chair for energy giant RWE, one of the biggest offshore wind farm developers in the world.
“But it will require a Herculean effort.”
So what are the biggest barriers to Starmer’s energy revolution?
Perhaps the biggest is the UK’s current reliance on 32 gas-fired power stations, which generated about one-third of our electricity last year, according to the National Grid.
In winter cold spells, when temperatures and wind speeds plummet, this can rise to as much as 65pc, with the power stations pouring nearly three tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every second in winter.
Decarbonising the grid means either replacing all these gas-fired plants or retrofitting them with equipment to capture their CO2 emissions and bury them underground.
In the first year of a prospective Labour government, Miliband and Starmer have pledged to “rewire Britain” with radical measures.
This includes: ending the de facto onshore wind ban in England; fast-tracking a new round of contracts for renewable energy developers; establishing a “British jobs bonus” to incentivise firms to build their supply chains in the UK; creating a state-backed body, GB Energy, to support and de-risk technologies such as green hydrogen and carbon capture; creating a national wealth fund to invest in infrastructure; and reforming planning rules, grid connection processes and the electricity market.
In September, when challenged about the scale of these ambitions, Miliband was defiant.
“We’ve got to get out of the idea of everything being impossible in this country,” he told the news website Politico.
Those close to the shadow energy secretary insist having a net zero grid by 2030 is a firm target, not simply an ambition.
Yet the changes required in little more than six years are staggering.
Today, there are about 15 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity but Labour’s aspiration is for 55 gigawatts by 2030.
The official Government target is already 50GW, a number that requires the installation of at least one to two turbines every day for the next seven years – and one that the industry is struggling to meet already.
Labour also wants to more than double the UK’s onshore wind capacity to 35GW.
However, operators like SSE and RWE point out that onshore wind is weaker, the turbines are smaller and most of the best sites are taken. Onshore schemes also generate complaints from people living near them.
Solar power may offer more opportunities for accelerated expansion – but risks a similar backlash.
Labour’s plan is to triple capacity to 50GW by 2030, with such an expansion covering up to 400,000 acres of mainly farmland in solar panels – an area the size of Hertfordshire.
Developers will want to put those farms in southern England, where the sunshine is strongest, and near to the cities that will buy the power. However, this will almost guarantee objections from environmentalists.
Nuclear power may offer one potential lifeline. The UK’s four oldest nuclear power stations were all due to close between 2026 and 2028 but their lifetime could now be extended into the 2030s. That would add nearly five gigawatts of zero-carbon electricity into the mix – enough to power more than 6m homes.
Labour is also basing its 2030 target on two other technologies. The party wants at least 10 gigawatts of hydrogen production to be up and running, alongside carbon capture and storage at gas-fired power stations.
But Aurora Energy Research, a think tank that has advised the Government, argues that based on current deployment rates, the UK’s grid won’t be net zero until the early 2040s.
“Neither the current target of 2035, nor the more ambitious target of 2030, are remotely achievable,” argues Ashutosh Padelkar, a senior associate at Aurora.
Other industry figures are more positive about Labour’s chances but note that grid connection delays remain a massive, existential threat to their ambition.
It can currently take up to 13 years for new energy projects to get connected, with more than 1,600 currently on the waiting list.
Most of these are “phantom” projects that will never come to fruition, but due to a first-come-first-serve system, they are blocking the way for others. The National Grid is seeking to overhaul the queue but is struggling to halt a flood of spurious applications.
For example, RWE, the biggest UK gas plant operator with nine existing sites, has been hit by delays in attempting to build a new site with carbon capture at Stallingborough.
“From a technical perspective, we can deliver it by 2030, says UK boss Glover. “But our current grid connection offer is 2035.”
He says the company needs financial and regulatory certainty before it can push the button, including a power supply agreement and confirmation that CO2 shipping and storage will be in place.
Another key question is whether already-stretched global supply chains will be able to match a sudden surge in demand for green energy materials in Britain.
Wind farm developers are already struggling to get hold of substations and other components such as high-voltage cables.
“Right now, we’re looking at five to seven-year lead times for substations,” Glover adds. “So even if I ordered them tomorrow, you’re looking at them being delivered by 2028, 2029, 2030.”
Glover is also sceptical that developers will be able to build at the pace demanded by Labour while existing “made in Britain” requirements remain in place.
At the moment, wind farms bidding for contracts for difference (CfDs), which guarantee a power price, have to show that at least half of their supply chain’s value is based in the UK.
“If you need to deliver by 2030, you’re halving the time that you’re giving me to deliver – so you need to buy the equipment from wherever you can get it in the world,” argues Glover.
To solve these problems, Labour is promising to “focus minds” and take an approach similar to the Covid-19 vaccine task force.
“We will be led by the experts,” says one Labour source. “And our watchword will be pragmatism, alongside ambition, to do this quickly.”
Not everyone thinks it is a complete moonshot.
“We’re already at 50pc clean power in the UK,” says Harriet Fox, an energy and climate data analyst for Ember, the consultancy behind Labour’s plans.
“And if you look at the growth trajectory of the past, it’s not impossible to imagine that we can reach these targets.”
Whether they can pull it off remains an open question. But Aurora’s Padelkar argues that the faster the UK reduces its dependence on gas, the more protected consumers will be from future Ukraine-style price shocks.
“Even if it’s difficult to achieve,” he says. “We should do everything we can to reach it.”
