speech by Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP – Inside track

This is an extract from the keynote speech given by RT Hon Ed Miliband MP, shadow secretary of state for energy security and net zero, at the launch of the latest update of Green Alliance’s Net zero policy tracker on 19 March 2024.

Today I want to lay out the stakes on climate and energy. My case is that this is the most important election on climate and energy this country has ever seen because of the moment in which we are living, the opportunity that making the transition offers our country, and the global implications of our election. Britain is at the frontline of the climate fight when so many countries around the world are deciding whether to accelerate action or turn away from it.

We have insight now on progress made
It has become too easy to treat the disturbing and distressing as the new normal. Imagine visiting 2024 from 2014 and seeing where we are. Last month was the warmest February on record globally, making it the ninth month in a row with record temperatures for the time of year. This follows 2023 as a record breaking year for temperature, with the nine warmest years on record all occurring since 2014.  We see the effects all around us, and if we had seen all of this from the vantage point of a decade ago, we would not have been indifferent, we would have been shocked. The danger today is that we continue the cycle of political apathy.

So far so gloomy. However, we now have insight that would have given us cause for some optimism in 2014. For instance, for most of the world, renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. Solar costs have fallen almost 90 per cent over the decade, and as a result, where the first terawatt of solar took 70 years to install, the next will only take three. Similarly, battery costs have fallen 80 per cent, and offshore wind costs have fallen by 70 per cent.

Renewable energy is now the cheaper, as well as the cleaner choice. Furthermore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that dependency on fossil fuels leaves us at the mercy of petrostates and dictators, and clean power offers a route to energy security and independence.

Climate action offers the possibility of economic transformation that the British people have been crying out for: net zero could create as many as 17 million net new jobs across the world by 2030 alone. Simply put, the case for climate is no longer just a long term moral duty to future generations, but also about delivering prosperity to today’s present generation. This is the 2024 case for climate action.

This then is the climate paradox we face. Dangerous climate change is accelerating, and we are simply not doing enough. Yet at the same time, we can be more confident that we have the solutions, and so much more confident about the benefits in bills, jobs and security of going faster not slower.

Labour’s offer
Labour have hardwired our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower into a core part of our plan to change our economy. It is one of Keir Starmer’s five missions for government, and it is core to Rachel’s growth agenda.

Understandably, there has been much debate following the scaling back of our £28 billion commitment, but there should be no doubt in the ambition of our agenda. We are committed to a decarbonised power system by 2030, which would be the leading commitment of any major country across the world. We will be the first G7 oil and gas producing country to commit to no new North Sea oil and gas licences. We will set up a new publicly owned energy generation company for the first time in 70 years, Great British Energy, capitalised at £8.3 billion.

Through Great British Energy, we are committed to the largest expansion of community energy and ownership in our country’s history, investing £3 billion over the parliament. We will invest over £7 billion in a National Wealth Fund to protect and create jobs across our country – in steel, automotive, renewables and through port investment, hydrogen and carbon capture.

We will specifically reward companies that manufacture in our industrial heartlands and coastal communities with a new British Jobs Bonus, finally ensuring that greater clean power in our country produces the jobs alongside it.

We will double the planned investment in warm homes, investing £13.2 billion over the parliament, plus the ECO scheme on top, to slash fuel poverty. This will be the largest ever investment in home energy efficiency in our history. This is investment is all additional to existing planned public investment in the net zero transition. This catalytic public investment will crowd in tens of billions more in private investment.

Additionally, we will be the first major financial centre in the world to introduce mandatory 1.5 degree-aligned transition plans for financial institutions and major companies. This is a world leading agenda, more central to our story of how we will change the country than at any previous election, a story of lower bills, jobs, security and protecting the planet.

The second part of our mission is to ‘accelerate to net zero’. Across transport, nature, public buildings, resource efficiency, we know we need to take far greater action to meet our international NDC (nationally determined contribution) commitment for 2030.

There can be no solution to the climate crisis without action on nature. The threat to biodiversity is profound, the urgency as great as on carbon emissions, and indeed the solutions are as clear and as positive. By acting on nature, we are not just helping wildlife thrive or preventing climate change, but can ensure a better future for our farmers, good jobs, access to green spaces, healthier environments and cleaner air. We will have more to say on nature in our manifesto.

To end on a more personal note. I came back to frontline politics because of how much I care about this agenda. A sense of responsibility in part and a sense of possibility too. We know that we are shortly entering the second half of what is the decisive decade. The chance to help make any positive contribution to the climate fight is something I could never and would never pass up. At the same time, we know much more than we did a decade ago that we have the solutions in front of us. That gives me a sense of possibility.

Of course, there are big challenges. But I am inspired by what we can achieve as part of a genuine national mission: government setting the direction, breaking down the barriers and investing; business providing the ingenuity, ideas and resources; investors with the tens of billions in private investment we need; civil society holding government and business to account; citizens mobilising to act and pressuring government to do so.