Who's the Greenest of Them All?

In their recent party conferences, the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Labour have been detailing their plans on energy and climate change.

At the Liberal Democrat Party conference, Simon Hughes MP set out the Liberal Democrat policy for “Britain’s Energy Future”. In this, his emphasis was for action now by both Britain and Europe to reduce the impacts and stop climate change. The party’s energy policy will focus on ensuring:

• fair fuel bills and warm homes for all – in effect, eradicating fuel poverty
• safe and secure energy supplies, which means yes to renewables and no to nuclear
• a new generation of jobs to build the green future for Britain
• giving people and communities maximum influence over their lives
• creating the best quality environment for our children and grandchildren.

Hughes identified that there were opportunities on the back of the recent financial crisis to overhaul the process and create a new mechanism to facilitate a very large green capital investment programme. This, he said, would facilitate the development of the infrastructure to service this growth area.

He also outlined the role that the Liberal Democrats would require from their influence in the European Union. The key issue was to create a Europe-wide supergrid to promote the flow of energy from areas of high generation capability to those not so fortunate.

In his speech to the conference, Hughes also stated that the Liberal Democrats would seek to ensure all new coal fired power stations would include 100% carbon capture and storage and that they felt that nuclear power was not an option because it did not provide significant carbon reductions, is very expensive and it would continue the legacy of a centralised and undemocratic energy supply system.

In their speeches at the Conservative Party Conference, Greg Clark, shadow secretary for energy and climate change and shadow energy minister Charles Hendry set out the Conservatives’ plans for a 21st century approach to energy and climate change.

Under their plans, a future Conservative government would:

• publish planning guidance concerning nuclear energy by 2017
• build marine energy parks that would be “world centres in harnessing the power of the sea”
• provide incentives for bio-digestion (such as anaerobic digestion)
• upgrade the national grid to “a smart grid”
• provide communities who host onshore wind farms with the revenue from all the business rates generated from the scheme for the first six years.

Focusing on energy efficiency, the party proposes to give every household in Britain a “green deal” to invest in energy saving technology in the home. It would roll out smart meters and require every energy bill to disclose the cheapest possible tariff and how to move to it. It would also require transparency in wholesale and retail energy prices.

The Conservatives concluded that the UK has the potential to be a world leader in renewables, suggesting that the difference between the leading parties on the subject was not “ideological” but that, unlike Labour, a Tory administration would “get on with it”. Speaking in a question-and-answer session, Hendry criticised the Government for failing to produce a roadmap to reach 33GW of offshore wind.

In comparison, earlier this month Ed Miliband, Labour’s Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, outlined how the Labour manifesto will deliver the UK’s energy and climate change challenges. Key elements of the speech included:

• an announcement of a £10m green neighbourhoods programme that will pioneer green technology
• proposals to raise billions of pounds to invest in clean coal technology
• further reform of the planning laws to include nuclear power and press ahead with plans for new nuclear power generation
• a further £20m to support research and development in low carbon industries, including renewables, marine, tidal and wind.

Changes to the energy company licensing conditions were also introduced to avoid “people on pre-payment meters being ripped off”. In addition, this would include a new compulsory system, where energy companies must provide guaranteed support for the poorest in society through currently voluntary schemes such as social tariffs and reduced rates for the poorest in society.

Other key Labour plans for the environment include:

• aspirations to make all new homes zero carbon by 2015
• a £100 billion blueprint for renewable energy that aims to deliver a “step change in low carbon energy supply”
• over the next 3 years a further 5 million households will be helped with installing insulation.

Labour believes there is a trinity of clean power that covers clean coal, nuclear and renewables with the core of renewables being wind power.

So what do you think?
We’re conducting a poll (see top right) into who you think is, in reality, the mainstream political party with the best ‘green’ policies – Liberal Democrat, Conservative or Labour?