Community Energy England today says in a statement that it believes the party’s plans published yesterday “have the potential to transform Britain’s energy system through local action on climate which benefits local people”.

Labour’s promises unveiled yesterday back the party’s earlier pledges towards local energy. They include making targeted energy grants to local authorities from a £600 million pot, and low interest loans made direct to community groups from a pool of £400 million.

The party’s manifesto for 4 July declares “Local power generation is an essential part of the energy mix and reduces pressures on the transmission grid. Labour will deploy more distributed production capacity through our Local Power Plan. Great British Energy will partner with energy companies, local authorities, and co-operatives to install thousands of clean power projects, through a combination of onshore wind, solar, and hydropower projects.

“We will invite communities to come forward with projects, and work with local leaders and devolved governments to ensure local people benefit directly from this energy production.”

In its statement Community Energy England endorses probable energy secretary Ed Miliband’s view that such backing can “kick-start thousands of transformational local energy project”.

“Labour’s Local Power Plan offers grants for local authorities and low interest loans for community energy organisations to do new local, community-led and owned clean energy projects“, the CEE’s statement says.

“Over five years, this could deliver 8 gigawatts of solar and onshore wind – the equivalent of 2.5 nuclear power stations – enough to power 4.35 million homes”.

CEE chief executive Emma Bridge went on, “We welcome the Labour manifesto’s plan to grow our fantastic community energy sector and unlock huge benefits for local people.

“Community energy projects deliver 12 to 13 times the benefit of commercial energy installations. So they are uniquely suited to engage local people to participate in the energy transformation. Labour’s Local Power Plan is a win, win, win for communities, local economies and the country,” said Bridge

In 2021, the Environmental Audit Committee advised the government that “due to the urgency of the climate crisis and the vital roles communities will have to play in reaching net zero, it is essential… to support the long-term growth of community energy across the UK.” Chris Skidmore MP in his Review of the Government’s Net Zero Policies recommended that the government “turbocharge community energy.”

“The Labour manifesto and their Local Power Plan demonstrate that the party understands that empowering people and communities to take local climate action, which will also benefit local people, is essential to achieving net zero.

“We are pleased to see real backing for community energy in the Liberal Democrat and Green manifestos too”, noted Bridge.

“All parties with plans to meet the scale of the climate challenge share the consensus that community energy is crucial for any serious climate policy programme.

“We are disappointed that the Conservative manifesto, despite stretching to 80 pages, does not mention community energy at all. The Conservatives’ manifesto doubles down on commitments to invest more in fossil fuels, including new gas power stations, while continuing to block renewable energy developments”.

Bridge says restrictions on new onshore wind turbines have effectively stopped new ones being built in England, with just a handful of new turbines being built per year.  The Conservatives’ programme as set out in its manifesto would slow down progress towards net zero and cement our dependence on fossil fuels for years to come”.

Personal voting intentions differ among CEE officials, as influenced by the parties’ varying stances in relation to the burgeoning co-operative sector.

This week CEE policy manager Duncan Law shared with a public meeting of south London co-op SE24 Community Energy his intention to vote Green, due to their support for local, accountable actions in response to the climate emergency.

Former Conservative energy minister Chris Skidmore last week told a London solar conference that he was ‘politically homeless’, after he resigned his Bristol seat last year in disappointment at the Sunak’s administration’s foot-dragging over green issues.   The West County former MP told delegates that the future of energy is local, citing the achievements of co-ops such as Bath and West Community Energy.

Outside the activities of its volunteer-run co-operatives, today’s CEE statement welcomes Labour’s pledge to double onshore wind capacity by 2030. It notes that new onshore turbines in England have been held back since David Cameron’s Conservatives introduced a de facto ban nine years ago.

Interest declared:  The present author has for several years invested in and volunteered for several community energy co-ops across London and the South East.

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A ministerial statement in Parliament this afternoon is expected to issue guidance to UK planners, enacting a presumption in favour of new wind turbine farms on English landscapes, thus reversing David Cameron’s block imposed since 2015 on new developments in England.

Opposition from leading Tories to the ban’s continuation, including from former energy secretary & CoP26 president Sir Alok Sharma and from ex-premier Liz Truss, is reported to have forced the hand of ministers, including planning and levelling up secretary Michael Gove and new energy secretary Claire Coutinho.

Cameron clamped down on new English wind projects in 2015, in response to NIMBY-ist lobbying against the technology, orchestrated by Leicestershire MP Chris Heaton-Harris, now the secretary of state for Northern Ireland but at the time a backbencher.  Conservative newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph & Daily Mail exaggerated turbines’ alleged harm to house prices and numbers of strikes leading to bird deaths.

Wind electricity has in recent years traded on wholesale markets at between £40 and £50 per MWh, half the pre-Ukraine price of gas-generated power, and lower yet than nuclear.

Behind only solar, land-based wind is also the second quickest power technology to deploy at utility scale.  Upfront capital costs of land-based turbines per MW of generation are thought to be about one-third of their marine sisters.

New turbines have continued to be erected in Wales & Scotland under devolved powers.

The Johnson administration twelve months ago signalled a nominal end to Cameron’s then seven-year ban on English ventures.  But a succession of planning ministers under three Tory premiers since has left Whitehall failing to complete administrative arrangements. Left in place was Cameron’s block that, in effect, enabled a single local objection to hold up any wind application in England.

Last week, research into popular views among 2,000 UK billpayers continued to draw into question the true extent of vocal, but increasingly unrepresentative opposition to land-based turbines.  Copper Communication’s study found that – contrary to NIMBY narratives – older Britons are even more in favour of local renewable power sources – including onshore wind farms in their locality – than their children.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 at lunchtime today, and before the expected ministerial statement, James Robottom, head of onshore wind at RenewableUK asked for planning processes to treat turbines the same as other onshore structures. He feared that proposals emerging from a government consultation closed in March would not be sufficient to restore developers’ faith.

Investor confidence in the technology was very low, said Robottom, as a result of a planning system likely still to discriminate against onshore wind.  ”We are trying  to re-start a supply chain from a standing start,” he added.

Conservative objector John Hayes MP, a former energy minister, told the programme that onshore wind farms adversely affected the landscape, local amenities and house prices. “There is no place for onshore wind where it is spreads across the open countryside”, Hayes said.

Chris Skidmore, the Tory MP who reviewed Britain’s Net Zero policies for disgraced premier Johnson, said that the eight-year ban had increased costs on British consumers, by depriving them of lower cost onshore power.   Many of his fellow MPs lagged behind a sea-change affecting among UK voters, most of whom now supported greater onshore generation.

Three turbines were erected onshore in England in 2022, including two near Keele, Staffordshire.

That’s fewer than the 19 Ukraine managed last year at  Tyligulska, near Mykolaiv in the country’s south, while fighting Russian invaders.

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The former energy minister was asked by short-lived D-BEIS secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg to review goals and methods by which Britain should meet its legally enforceable target of balancing carbon dioxide emissions and containment by 2050.

In his Mission Zero report out today, Skidmore recommends capitalising on Britain’s world-leading expertise in low carbon tech to secure economic advantage.

“Without the green economy, there is no economy”, Skidmore bluntly states.

With measures sure to dismay vocal NZ foot-draggers in his own party, the Bristol MP advocates nearly 130 new steps to speed up purging CO2 from the nation.  More on-shore wind farms, tougher home insulation standards, and endorsing the government’s ban on gas boilers in new homes after 2025, are all high on Skidmore’s list.

Axing planning laws which obstruct low carbon innovations, and uniting communities & local councils in launching at least one Trailblazer Net Zero City this decade, also feature.

Low carbon businesses and their UK supply chains sustained 400,000 jobs in 2020, earning a combined turnover estimated at £41.2 billion.  The MP points out that the Johnson’s administration’s continuing Energy Security Strategy and its Net Zero Strategy aim to leverage £100 billion of extra private investment, on the path to creating an additional 480,000 British jobs by 2030.

Skidmore frames his reforms by topic, including :

• establishing an Office for Net Zero Delivery, responsible for placing delivery at the heart of government thinking
• Establishing this year a financing strategy across Whitehall with a bias towards spurring green spending by government & industry
• Using infrastructure, including extending Ofgem’s powers to speed connection of already cheaper onshore wind and solar to the grid
• Pulling policy levers to advance network adaptations & developments favouring new industry inputs such as hydrogen and stored CO2
• Targeting a ‘Help to Grow Green’ campaign at SMEs, informing them on how to plan and invest

• Engaging consumers and businesses with a standardised approach to ecolabelling of products, and a Net Zero Charter mark, acknowledging ‘best in class’ achievement by firms

Over 1,800 submissions and 50 roundtables with financiers, enterprises, technologists and environmentalists went into Skidmore’s Mission Zero report

Its first part quantifies the benefits to individuals and Britain’s economy of an accelerated drive towards Net Zero. Its second sets out a roadmap for how government and industry can exploit the goal’s opportunities, and catalyse action in individual sectors of the economy, such as enhancing the role of local authorities

Lord Nick Stern, lead author of the economic review which inspired Labour’s 2008 Climate Change Act, highlighted how the UK is well-placed to benefit from the increasing demand for net-zero goods and services

“The review argues convincingly that the transition to a net-zero economy is the growth opportunity of the 21st century”, said Stern.

“It also correctly highlights the critical importance of government by providing clarity, certainty, consistency and continuity of policy. I hope the Prime Minister and his government will respond to the review with the urgency and scale required”.

For the Aldersgate Group of environmentally progressive businesses and financiers, executive director Nick Molho said:

“The Skidmore Review is absolutely right to emphasise that the net zero transition is a major pro-business and pro-investment opportunity.

“Its recommendations are based on an impressively comprehensive engagement with businesses and civil society. The government should use this review to produce an updated and strengthened Net Zero Strategy early this year”.

Energy and business secretary Grant Shaps added “I am grateful to Chris– the man who signed our climate commitments into law – for his report. It offers a range of ideas and innovations for us to consider as we work to grasp the opportunities from green growth”.

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The D-BEIS secretary chose December’s third weekend, a fortnight into a cold snap, to feature himself touring his own home on Twitter, laying draught excluders under doors and turning off dormant appliances like routers.

During her catastrophic 45-day premiership this autumn, Britain’s shortest serving head of government had ruled out such a publicity campaign, citing to colleagues its allegedly patronising nature.

The eighteen million pounds confirmed as committed by Shapps to inspire low-cost home improvements is considerably less than the £ 1.5 billion in job creation & saving of heat committed by the May & Johnson administrations in their Green Deal, a programme targeting extensive efficiency upgrades to a planned 600,000 homes.

On grounds of expense, and amidst cumbersome administration by US outsourcing contractors ICF, in February 2020 Rishi Sunak, then serving as Johnson’s chancellor, quietly cancelled that scheme without notice to insulation firms, in an attempt to recoup more than 90% of its budget unspent.

Shapps’ less ambitious “It All Adds Up” drive today centres instead on ‘simple, low-cost, or no-cost” actions, yet unadopted in most UK homes.

Turning down to 60 degrees the flow temperature of domestic boilers, could yield £100 a year in a typical home. Switching off devices at the wall socket £70. Lagging doors, and putting cling film across windows might save £60, according to D-BEIS. A new website supports the campaign, part of the government’s Help for Households largesse.

“It’s in everyone’s interest to use every trick in the book to use less energy while keeping homes warm and staying safe”, said the energy secretary.

“For very little or no cost, you can save pounds. It all adds up, so I urge people to take note of the advice in this new campaign”, Shapps added.

At 46%, fewer than half of Britain’s estimated 28 million dwellings achieve an energy efficiency grade of C or above, on the eight-grade Energy Performance Certificate scale. In 2010, that figure was only 10%.

Energy industry participants lined up to support D-BEIS’ “It All Adds Up” campaign include Dame Clare Moriarty of Citizens Advice, by law the independent monitor of government policy on home heat. Energy UK for suppliers, and Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem director.

Moriarty said: “This winter, many people will be worried about how much they might have to spend to heat their homes. These tips should help cut down the cost of staying warm.

However, we know lots of people are living in cold, dark homes because they’re stretched to their limit and simply have nothing left to cut back on. If you’re in this situation, speak to your energy supplier or contact Citizens Advice for support”.

D-BEIS’s campaign repeats the government’s pledge to trim 15% from energy consumption in Britain’s homes & workplaces by 2030. To that end, the announcement flags up the £ 6.6 billion earmarked this parliament, and a further £ 6 billion committed before 2028.

Other support for buildings insulation includes £ 4 billion in the ECO4 programme targeting poor households, and £ 1 billion in the ECO+ drive, which extends help to dwellings not previously eligible for upgrade under the long-standing ECO ( Energy Company Obligation ) programme

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