I highly recommend reading the following analysis by David Turver of Labour’s magical thinking when it comes to their undeliverable allegedly “green” net zero energy plan.
I have written a few articles pulling apart the Government’s energy policy and the Future Energy Scenarios put together by National Grid ESO and I also covered the AR5 results debacle. So, I thought it only fair to look at Labour’s energy plans touted by Ed Miliband as their Green Prosperity Plan.
Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan
Labour’s plan was launched with some fanfare in the Guardian back in September last year by Keir Starmer. He promised to turn the UK into an “independent green superpower by 2030.” The plan involved doubling onshore wind capacity, tripling solar and quadrupling offshore wind. He also claimed that his plan would cut hundreds of pounds off annual household energy bills, create half a million jobs and make this country the first to have a zero-emission power system.
The plan was endorsed by the likes of Simon Evans (of Carbon Brief) in the Guardian and also by Phil MacDonald (see Figure 1) who is the Managing Director of Ember, a clean energy think tank.
Figure 1 - Phil MacDonald Managing Director of Ember endorsing Labour's Energy Plan
In fact, it appears Ember actually wrote part of the plan. MacDonald described the plan as “ambitious but possible.” It has been a while since I was a consultant, but that kind of language is usually code for “our models anticipate pigs soon sprouting wings and starting to fly.”
So, how does the plan stand up to scrutiny?
Unrealistic Renewables Build Out Plan
Ember’s expected generation capacity for solar, onshore wind and offshore wind in 2030 is 51.3GW, 34.1GW and 54.6GW respectively. These targets are far higher than the Government’s targets of 39GW, 27GW and 50GW respectively. I compared Labour’s targets to the actual capacity in operation over time from the Government’s Energy Trends (Table 6.1). The result in shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2 - Actual Renewable Capacity vs Ember Model (MW)
Shadows Over the Solar Power Plan
The yellow solid line is the actual Solar PV generating capacity over time. The yellow dotted line is the linear trend extrapolated out to 2030. The yellow triangle is Ember’s target of 51.3GW. This is 3.5 times the current 14.7GW installed capacity. The rate of new installations has pretty much flat-lined since the boom of solar installations from 2012 to 2017. There needs to be a big boost in installation rates just to get back to trend. Even if that is achieved, that would only deliver ~27.6GW by 2030. 46% of Ember’s plan would not be delivered even if we got back to trend installations since 2009. Things are not looking good, because the AR5 results showed only 1.9GW awarded compared to the 4.6GW extra capacity per year required to hit Labour’s target.
Wind Plans Blown Away
The solid blue line shows the actual onshore wind installed capacity over time. Again, the rate of new installations has fallen since 2017. We currently have 14.8GW of onshore wind capacity. The Ember target is about 2.3 times the current capacity. The blue dotted line again shows the linear trend out to 2030. If we got back to trend, we might expect to get to around 24GW of installed capacity, about 10GW short of the target shown by the blue square. Again the AR5 awards totalled 1.7GW compared to the 2.4GW required to hit Labour’s target.
Offshore wind capacity is shown on the solid green line. Ember’s target of 54.6GW is shown by the green square and is some 3.9 times the current 13.8GW of installed capacity. Current capacity is slightly above the dotted green trend-line because of the new developments that came online last year. However, even if the trend could be maintained out to 2030, there would still be a gap of over 34GW compared to Ember’s target of 54.6GW. The chances of even achieving the trend are slim. Vattenfall pulled out of the 1.4GW Norfolk Boreas development earlier this year and put Norfolk Vanguard East and West, with a combined capacity of 2.8GW “under scrutiny.” Moreover, no offshore wind was approved in AR5 compared to the 5.1GW per annum required to hit Labour’s target.
The change required in solar and wind installations to achieve the plan would make the chart look like a hockey stick that would make Michael Mann blush. I think we can file these plans under “Definitely Not Going to Happen.”
More Magical Thinking
There’s more magical thinking in Labour’s Green Energy Plan. It includes 1.1GW of Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) that has an EROEI of less than 1, making it a net energy sink. Not only is this a crime against thermodynamics, but there is also no plant currently operating with this technology in the UK. It also includes 2.6GW of gas with carbon capture too. Again, there’s no plant operating with this technology in the UK and Norway has suspended its carbon capture project because of high costs.
Apparently, we are also going to conquer the problems associated with Marine and Tidal power and install 2.1GW of capacity by 2030. This plan comes despite the Orkney Sea Snake project being scrapped and only 0.05GW of tidal stream winning awards in AR5, scheduled for deliver in 2027/28. There’s also 6.5GW of hydrogen capacity planned, where none currently exists. The Government is already having trouble working out how he is going to pay for hydrogen technology because plans to add yet another levy on our energy bills have been shelved. There is also no viable project underway to store the amount of hydrogen that would be required.
To cap it all, Ed’s colleague Rachel Reeves, has cut the £28bn per year spending that he was relying on to deliver his fantasy. Despite this, and even after the disastrous AR5 results, Ed was posting on X about his plan “to make the UK a clean energy superpower by 2030” (see Figure 3). Complete and utter delusion.
Figure 3 - Ed Miliband and his plans for the UK to be a clean energy superpower by 2030
James McSweeney has also written an article criticising Ed Miliband’s Net Zero energy plan. His main criticism was about the very sketchy plans for electricity storage in Ember’s model. This has been the subject of a Twitter-spat with others claiming that if there’s a storage shortfall, we can just run the remaining gas-fired plants to either power the grid directly or recharge the batteries. James is probably right that the cost of storage is prohibitive, but really, as we have seen that is but one of many problems, that have holed Miliband’s plan below the waterline.
In summary, none of the renewables technologies are on track to meet Labour’s plan and the funding to deliver it has been withdrawn. I don’t know what Ember’s staff were smoking when they compiled this report, but it certainly looks like poor old Ed inadvertently inhaled some of it.
