Labour 2030 target needs wind farm boom
LABOUR would need to build offshore wind farms at an unprecedented rate in a scramble to hit net zero targets, energy experts have warned.
Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to make Britain carbon-neutral by 2030 would require a five-fold increase in turbine installations and a massive expansion in port capacity, according to a confidential report commissioned from leading analysts Aurora Energy.
The scale of the expansion is so ambitious that it could even put Britain at risk of running out of steel for the undersea cables to connect them to the grid, Aurora said. Since 2015, offshore wind has expanded by about 1.4 gigawatts per year – equivalent to about 150 to 200 turbine installations annually.
Labour’s targets would mean increasing annual installations to 7.5Gw or 750 turbines, a huge task in itself.
The study said: “Labour’s aim of deploying 60GW offshore wind by 2030 will require significant expansion of the transmission network and a rapid scaling up of supply chains.
“Installing 60GW of offshore wind by 2030 would require increasing the yearly deployment rate by a factor of 5× between 2024 and 2030 at a time when supply chains are increasingly constrained due to the aftermath of the pandemic and rising global demand.” Aurora says Labour’s energy policies are very similar to the Tories – with the key difference being shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband’s plans to implement them at record speed.
He and Sir Keir Starmer have pledged to achieve 100pc clean power by 2030 based on a huge increase in offshore wind, equivalent to adding 20 large nuclear power stations the size of Hinkley Point C.
Labour also plans to lift the ban on onshore wind farms to install several thousand more turbines on uplands, as well as turning an area of countryside bigger than Middlesex into solar farms.
On Tuesday, Mr Miliband said this year’s general election was the most important on climate and energy the UK has ever had.
Aurora said the plans were likely to provoke a rural backlash. The report, which was funded by the energy industry, said: “Finance, skills, supply chains and planning times will be key barriers to delivering Labour’s target of decarbonising the power sector by 2030.” But it said Labour may be able to ignore such objections, provided it got a big enough majority as the party “drawing most of their voters from urban areas may be more willing to implement changes, such as easing stringent local planning approval”.
Aurora said consumers could also get some benefits from Labour’s plans, adding that the “faster deployment of the transmission network could save consumers £2.6bn and reduce emissions by 10m tons of CO2 a year”.
However, the problems may be practical as well as political. Labour’s plan would also create a huge demand for raw materials such as steel needed to make transmission cables, wind turbines and other kit – just as the UK’S own steel production is plummeting.
Ashley Kelty, energy research director at investment bank Panmure Gordon, said: “This is political virtue signalling. There is a snowball’s chance in hell of achieving anywhere near the targets promised in the policy report.”
A Labour spokesman said: “The Green Prosperity Plan is central to Labour’s mission to grow the economy.
“Labour’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower will cut bills and boost our national energy security.
“Our plan will invest in homegrown clean power that will crowd in billions of private investment and bring good jobs to Britain’s industrial heartlands.”