Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 15TH - 21ST NOVEMBER 2019 | 9 Election 2019 Analysis T he sound of the starting gun being red for the 2019 general election has already faded amid a cacophony of bold statements from across the political spectrum. The path to net zero has been chief among them, with each party clamouring to paint themselves as having the best plan for reach- ing the decarbonisation milestone, though there is little consensus on the timeframe. So far, the two parties leading the polls have held re on their speci c manifesto pledges. As Utility Week goes to press, Labour is thought to be in the nal stages of preparing its blueprint for power. The Con- servatives, meanwhile, are rumoured to be keen to keep their nal policies under wraps until the last possible moment, with individ- ual pledges set to be drip-fed at key public appearances in the interim. It will be the Labour manifesto that will be of most interest to the sector, which is eager for speci cs on a proposed 2030 net zero target and more concrete details on the party's plans for nationalisation, including who exactly will be targeted and when. While the Tories and Labour were keep- ing their powder dry, the Scottish National Party became the rst to publish its mani- festo, while the Liberal Democrats and the Greens made some headline pledges. The Green Party said it would seek to build 100,000 energy-eˆ cient homes every year until 2030, as a key plank of a £100 bil- lion a year plan to achieve a carbon neutral Britain by the end of the next decade. The Greens intend to nance the capital expenditure required to deliver this pro- gramme with £91.2 billion-worth of bor- rowing a year. A further £9 billion a year of operational spending would be met from tax changes, including increasing corporation tax to 24 per cent. The Greens argue that with the cost of government borrowing at its lowest for dec- ades, servicing the extra debt could be met by the surplus leŽ over from tax changes and savings that will be detailed in the party's upcoming manifesto. Deputy leader Amelia Womack said her party's plan would revolutionise transport infrastructure, rapidly roll out renewable energy in Britain and create hundreds of thousands of low-carbon jobs. She said: "This could be our last chance to elect a parliament to keep us below dan- gerous warming. The climate doesn't care about promises. The environment doesn't care about pledges. What we need is action." Meanwhile, the Lib Dems have set out plans to nearly match Labour's programme to retro t the UK's housing stock, commit- ting £15 billion over the next parliament to upgrade 26 million homes. The blueprint sets out the party's goal to upgrade the EPC (energy performance certi - cate) rating of every house in the UK to Band B by 2030, prioritising all fuel poor homes by 2025. The party would allocate £3 billion of capital spending a year on home insula- tion during the next parliament, equating to a total of £15 billion. This would be used to fully subsidise home upgrades for those in fuel poverty and provide incentives for other households to upgrade their dwellings, leveraging an estimated £4.3 billion extra of private money. The Lib Dems say the upgrade would save the 50 per cent of households who are currently living in a Band D-rated property around £550 a year on fuel bills. Labour has previously said it would spend up to £60 billion on a Warm Homes for All programme to upgrade the energy eˆ - ciency of "almost all" homes. The Liberal Democrat plan also includes proposals to develop tidal power by creat- ing a speci c pot of contracts to support the technology. While tidal power generated just 20,000kWh in 2018, it could generate up to 10 per cent of predictable long-term power, the Lib Dems claim. As part of a wider plan to generate 80 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030, the party plans to more than double the amount of both wind and solar power by 2030, to 53GW and 30GW respectively. Meanwhile, the party's climate lead, Wera Hobhouse, said that on "day one" of a Lib Dem government it would reinstate the Department of Energy and Climate Change. She said the disbanding of that "vital" department in 2016 to form the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had hindered action on climate change. At the launch of the SNP manifesto, leader Nicola Sturgeon urged Westminster to match the Scottish government's ambition on tackling climate change. Scotland's rst minister said her party's campaign would demand "real action on climate change". She said this would include demanding that "the UK goes further and faster and matches the scale of Scotland's world lead- ing ambitions". She added: "We're on a path to becoming a zero emissions country ve years ahead of the rest of the UK and we're making our voice and our values heard in Europe and on the international stage." Net zero will clearly remain a key talking point as the election progresses but all eyes will now be on Labour and the Conservatives as they reveal their hand in this most high stakes of games. First skirmishes on policy Campaigning has begun in earnest on what has been widely described as the 'climate election', but what have we learnt so far about their competing policies? Utility Week looks at what has been announced so far – and what hasn't.

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