Labour will end ‘delay and dither’ on UK renewables, says would-be energy secretary Miliband

There will be no more “delay and dither” on renewables and “nods and winks” to climate denial if Labour wins the upcoming UK election, shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband told the RenewableUK offshore wind summit, promising to unleash a historic wave of clean power investment.

Miliband was addressing the RenewableUK Global Offshore Wind summit in Manchester today ahead of a 4 July election in which his Labour Party is widely expected to sweep to power in place of the ruling Conservative Party.

Miliband said he invited everyone at the Global Offshore Wind conference to be part of the mission to turn the UK into a “clean energy superpower,” with offshore wind the “beating heart” of that transition.

More than two years on from the invasion of Ukraine, he said Britain has not solved the problems it caused – including rocketing energy bills – due to its exposure to fossil fuels markets controlled by “dictators” like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Britain is “still vulnerable to another shock,” he said. “We can’t go on like this.”

The answer “staring us in the face” is building more clean power at home, he said, pledging that Labour would end the “delay and dither” that the sector has become used to under the Conservatives on the energy transition.

Miliband said there would be “no more nods and winks to climate change denial” under Labour.

Labour will he said unleash a wave of clean energy investment to bring down bills and boost the UK’s energy independence.

There will be a “laser focus” on delivering Labour’s goal of kicking fossil fuels off the grid by 2030, he said – a mission akin to “delivering the Olympics”.

Labour plans to double onshore wind, treble solar and quadruple offshore wind by 2030, he said, which would see the offshore wind sector targeting 60GW of capacity.

Labour will also “end arbitrary and inconsistent decision making” that he said is hurting developers and overturn the “onshore wind ban”, which he said is approaching its ninth year.

Although the Conservatives supposedly overturned the de facto ban on new onshore wind projects in England last year, the changes have been described as inadequate by industry and they have not catalysed new projects.

Labour will be focused on removing industry barriers on planning, grid, supply chains and skills, he said – “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

One of Labour’s key pledges has been launching a new national clean energy company, GB Energy, to help boost the renewables rollout in the UK.

Miliband said GB Energy would be capitalised with £8.3bn ($10.6bn) in investment and would use “catalytic investment” to help boost emerging industries like floating offshore wind.

Miliband added that he sees public investment as “crowding in, not crowding out” the private sector.

“Governments around the world invest in our energy system, why don’t we as well?”

Miliband said he is “always struck by the fact that the Conservatives believe in public ownership” in the UK energy system – “just foreign public ownership,” referring to investments made by state energy including Sweden’s Vattenfall, Norway’s Statkraft and France’s EDF.

In the coming years, he said there is a “chance to put an end to the defeatism that says the task is too hard,” and government and industry working together “cannot help change people’s lives for the better.”

There is also a “vacuum of international leadership” on climate change and renewables, he said. People want “Britain to be back.”

The country re-establishing its domestic leadership on clean energy will, he said, hand it the “permission slip” to resume its international leadership as well.