LONDON — Keir Starmer’s Labour Party heads into its annual conference in Liverpool with a big, bold green promise: net zero electricity in Britain by 2030.
There’s just one problem with the pre-election pitch. Many in the energy sector, and even some of Westminster’s loudest green advocates, doubt the ambitious decarbonization drive — meant to galvanize Whitehall and industry — can be done.
“Frankly, no,” said Neil Golding, head of market intelligence at the Energy Industries Council, a trade association, when asked if the U.K. opposition party’s target is achievable. “Certainly not at the current pace of developments.” Gary Smith, boss of the GMB union, which represents oil and gas workers, has called it “impossible.”
“I personally don’t think it’s achievable,” said Chris Skidmore, a Conservative MP and former energy minister.
Skidmore has become an outspoken critic of his own government’s decision to water down net zero commitments, and recently voted with Labour on some energy issues in the House of Commons — but he can’t line up behind the opposition’s big target.
“It’s very much a moon shot,” admits Adam Bell, former head of energy strategy at the old Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. “Everything will need to fall into place if it’s to happen.”
Skidmore has a warning about moon shots, though. “Key to net zero delivery is retaining trust and confidence,” he told POLITICO. “And that means not over promising and under delivering.”
Doses of realism
Achieving Labour’s goal will mean the production of electricity in Britain — once dominated by coal and still heavily reliant on gas — no longer contributes to greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.
In this scenario, wind, solar and nuclear will produce almost all the U.K.’s electricity. Any gas that is left will have to be balanced out by carbon capture technology to meet Labour’s stated goal of a “zero carbon electricity system.” Getting there by the end of this decade would put the U.K. ahead of all other similar-sized economies.
Some of Labour’s own allies think it’s pie in the sky.
The GMB’s Smith told the Spectator magazine last month that it “cannot be done,” citing the shortage of undersea cables available in the global supply chain, without which the vast amounts of electricity generated by planned new offshore wind farms cannot be transmitted back to British shores.
And even some of the staunchest net zero defenders have their doubts.
John Gummer, the Conservative peer who chairs the U.K.’s official, independent advisory panel, the Climate Change Committee, said he would “like to support the proposal” but was “yet to see the evidence” that it’s possible to “improve on” the government’s existing target of 2035.
Don’t expect any of that to stop Starmer and his energy spokesman Ed Miliband — who addresses Labour’s annual conference Monday — from noisily promoting the target in Liverpool. Some experts think it’s a stretch — but doable. And the target has become a question of national ambition for Labour ahead of a general election expected next year.
“We’ve got to get out of the idea of everything being impossible in this country,” Miliband told POLITICO during a live interview in September. “We’ve got to have some ambition.”
Comparing skeptics to those who “said you couldn’t develop a [COVID] vaccine in 18 months,” he added: “If we have a … laser focus on making this 2030 plan happen … absolutely we can achieve this.”
The party’s calculation, according to insiders and industry figures briefed on the plans, is that by setting a clear, unambiguous target, they can galvanize the energy industry, attract investment into the U.K., and hit the target — or at least come very close, restoring the U.K.’s place as an international climate leader and creating jobs along the way.
But even those who’d like to support the pledge are calling for a dose of realism.
“It would be very good to decarbonize the grid by 2030,” Gummer said. “[But] it is important that targets are clearly achievable, even if tough.”
The grand green plan
The 2030 target has been Labour policy for a year now. For Starmer, it has become the go-to example of the green “radical change” he wants to see, whenever challenged that his policy stall is not bold enough.
On the surface, the plan is not wildly different from the government’s own target of having 95 percent low carbon electricity on the grid by 2030, growing to 100 percent by 2035 “subject to security of supply.”
But hitting even the latter target requires a major transformation of the U.K. energy system and a vast increase in the amount of grid infrastructure, like pylons, that will have to be built to deliver it.
It is also likely to rely on new technologies — carbon capture, hydrogen power generation, and small modular nuclear reactors — five years sooner than existing plans. None of these is yet deployed at scale in the U.K.
“To get to a net zero power grid, you probably need around 10 or 12 carbon capture plants built by 2035. At the moment we have zero,” said Steve Scrimshaw, vice president for the U.K. and Ireland at Siemens Energy, one of the major companies that will supply the components and technologies for Europe’s green energy push.
“[Labour’s target] will be a significant challenge. You have to look at supply chains, you have to look at skills and resources and all those types of things … [with] only seven years away to achieve all of that. So I think it is very, very ambitious, if I’m honest.”
But, Scrimshaw added: “People have to have that ambition. The scale of what we’re talking about here is immense.” Such a bold aim is a helpful “lodestar to aim for,” agrees Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of industry body Energy UK.
Some industry figures argue the barriers to Labour’s plans are political as much as practical.
“It’s not technically impossible,” Dan McGrail, chief executive of the RenewableUK energy trade association, told POLITICO. “There’s no technical barrier to that being achieved … Where it faces the greatest challenge is on all of the non-financial barriers that we’ve had in the industry all along. Can you connect to the grid fast enough? Can you get [planning] consent through the process fast enough?”
Labour knows these are significant hurdles. Miliband refers to “planning, skills, supply chain and grid” as “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
And the party’s mission has only become harder after the government failed to secure any offshore wind contracts in the latest auction round for renewables, said Bell, the former government energy official. “Achieving it now means efforts to do so will dominate Labour’s first hundred days,” he said.
Minus one hundred days
Sam Alvis, a former Labour adviser and now director of energy at the Public First consultancy, thinks work has to start even sooner than that.
“It needs to be a minus 100 days thing,” Alvis said. “It’s the conversation you should have with the civil servants about preparing for a Labour government. In those early contact conversations, this is what you’re talking about — because you have to just go build from day one.”
An aide to Miliband declined to comment on upcoming “access talks” with civil servants ahead of an election, which current polls suggest Labour will win, but said the party was “working to be day one ready” to deliver its plans. That work in government would include new legislation and a coordinating role for GB Energy, a proposed publicly-owned energy company, according to party announcements at the start of its conference.
“Everyone we talk to believes this is absolutely deliverable, but it will need a massive change of gear, approach and focus from the way this government operates,” the aide said.
One of Labour’s most important union backers agrees — but thinks the party needs to start preparing the ground for the possibility of missing its 2030 pledge.
“It’s a stretching target,” said Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. “Setting out that clear target is important. Setting out a clear direction of travel is important.” But there also needs to be “a contingency in place” if Labour falls short.
“Even the best prepared opposition coming into government doesn’t quite know what it’s going to be inheriting,” he said, adding: “Up to 2030, there’s going to be a role for gas-fired power stations, and Labour’s going to need to have the flex to say there will be a continuing role for gas beyond 2030, if that’s where we’re at.”
Cables, guys!
One key pinch point is the global supply chain. The U.K. is in an international race to clean its power system. Demand for wind turbines, undersea cables and electricity substations is soaring worldwide, said Golding of the Energy Industries Council, which represents companies working in that supply chain.
“There are huge constraints and pulls on the supply chain right now,” Golding said. “We’ve heard directly from members that if you want … an operational offshore wind farm by 2027 — tough, there aren’t the substations about at the moment.”
As for undersea cables, global demand is set to outstrip global supply next year, said Neil Gordon of the Global Underwater Hub industry group. Some other countries, using the clout of state backing, are securing massive contracts. TenneT, the Dutch state-owned transmission operator, put in a €5.5 billion order for 7,000 kilometers worth of cables from several different suppliers earlier this year.
“The actual supply capability in the global supply chain — output which is running at max — can approximately deliver 7,000 kilometers per year,” said Gordon. “In 2024, the demand is forecast to be over 10,000 kilometers per year – so you’re looking at almost 50 percent demand over and above the capacity that is already there.”
The price tag
And then there’s the cost.
Miliband told POLITICO that a Labour government would have “a willingness to invest” — and attract private investment — through a planned national wealth fund. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is committed to upping green investment spending to £28 billion a year by 2027.
Setting a bold target encourages upfront investment, bringing down energy costs in the long-term and saving consumers money, some experts argue. “With a more ambitious target to decarbonize the power system, we’ll see more front-loaded investment which will bring costs down sooner for those struggling with energy bills,” said Flossie Boyd, a political adviser at the Green Alliance think tank.
But the Conservative government has spotted a potential political weak spot in Labour’s borrowing plans. Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho told delegates at her own party conference last week that Labour’s plans would drive up inflation and “take us further and faster than any other country, no matter the cost on ordinary people” — an attack line that will likely be deployed again and again in the run-up to next year’s election.
Chris Skidmore, the former energy minister and government net zero tsar, said that he welcomed “any commitment to greater ambition.”
“But,” he added, “I looked very closely at the scale of the challenge that would be needed in the net zero review, and concluded that even 2035 is the greatest infrastructure challenge of the past 50 years, if not post-war.”
Much will depend, said one senior energy industry figure, granted anonymity to speak frankly about the 2030 target, on what happens in U.K. energy investment in the next 12 months — something over which Labour has no control. “If we’re going to hit even the government’s 2035 target, we need a step change in everybody’s understanding of what we’re trying to do and when we’re trying to do it by,” they said.
As it stands, the U.K.’s ability to green the electricity system by 2035, let alone 2030, is far from clear, the industry figure continued. “Labour signaling that they want to do it even faster – it puts the message out there,” they said. “But unless we start to ramp up now, we can’t do either.”