{"id":132849,"date":"2020-10-21T17:26:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T16:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=132849"},"modified":"2020-10-21T17:26:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T16:26:55","slug":"2020-party-conference-season-energy-and-the-green-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/2020-party-conference-season-energy-and-the-green-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 Party Conference Season: Energy and the green recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a series of blogs, the Vuelio Policy team is sharing insight from the main Party Conference speeches. Thomas Stevenson has summarised all of the announcements on energy, the green recovery and plans to create a more sustainable economy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Politicians and campaigners looking for an upside of the current pandemic have been quick to seize on the linked concepts of the green recovery and building back better. This is the idea that the economic reconstruction required in the months and years to come can be harnessed to effect the delivery of a greener, cleaner future economy, retaining some of the more positive adjustments made by humanity to minimise viral transmission. It was therefore no surprise to find politicians on all sides seizing on this topic at this year\u2019s party conferences.<\/p>\n

With infections worsening, it was unsurprising that Boris Johnson decided to major on the green economy in his address<\/a> to the Conservative conference \u2013 a bold, positive, boosterish message to create the sense that his ship of state is not merely being buffeted by the waves of the virus, but steering a confident course towards a \u2018new Jerusalem\u2019.<\/p>\n

Johnson promised that the Government was progressing towards the \u2018green industrial revolution\u2019 at \u2018gale force speed\u2019, pledging to make the UK \u2018the world leader in low cost clean power generation\u2019 and to deliver 40GW of energy from offshore wind by 2030, with an investment of \u00a3160m in ports and factories to manufacture turbines and a promise to deliver 1GW from floating offshore wind. This would, he claimed, make the UK the Saudi Arabia of wind and create 60,000 \u2018green-collar\u2019 jobs.<\/p>\n

Is this enough and will the UK really \u2018lead the world\u2019 in tackling climate change at next year\u2019s COP26 conference, as Johnson claimed? For now we are left wondering about the course ahead, as Number 10 revealed<\/a> that the Prime Minister\u2019s promises were just the first part of a \u2018ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution\u2019 to be set out later this year. It was perhaps concerning that the Chancellor\u2019s speech<\/a> did not mention the green economy, beyond a brief mention of the Green Homes Grants. With so much uncertainty ahead, there is a risk that Rishi Sunak will be unwilling to commit the high levels of investment that campaigners believe is needed in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Labour were quick to go on the attack, with Shadow Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Ed Miliband warning<\/a> that \u2018Boris Johnson rarely delivers on his rhetoric\u2019, claiming the funding was \u2018a drop in the ocean\u2019, and calling for \u2018a genuinely ambitious green recovery that will create jobs now\u2019. Shadow Energy and Green New Deal Minister Alan Whitehead added<\/a> that Johnson\u2019s target was insufficient and that other forms of energy would be needed, criticising the lack of a \u2018proper plan\u2019.<\/p>\n

While Labour might think the Government was unambitious, it didn\u2019t have a dramatic policy announcement of its own. Instead, Keir Starmer outlined<\/a> his vision of \u2018the country I want us to be\u2019, including a commitment \u2018to a greener, cleaner and fairer society\u2019. He also said that the UK should be \u2018leading the world \u2013 and leading by example \u2013 in tackling the climate emergency\u2019. This is a bold promise, but Starmer did not set out how he hoped to achieve it.<\/p>\n

This theme was developed<\/a> by Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds, who pledged that she would test \u2018every single budget line against the goal of net zero carbon emissions\u2019 because \u2018investment that favours our climate, also favours jobs\u2019. Those interested in her thinking could do worse than to cast their eyes beyond the UK\u2019s shores, as she contrasted the Government\u2019s \u2018limited ambitions\u2019 to green investments being made by Germany and France.<\/p>\n

The challenge for both parties, therefore, is to add detail which will help them to realise their ambitions for a green recovery. This is most acute and urgent for the Conservatives, as the party of Government, and whose promises that an Energy White Paper and a National Infrastructure Strategy addressing these issues will be published soon have worn very thin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a series of blogs, the Vuelio Policy team is sharing insight from the main Party Conference speeches. Thomas Stevenson has summarised all of the announcements on energy, the green recovery and plans to create a more sustainable economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":412,"featured_media":132850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7383,7271],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132865,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132849\/revisions\/132865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}