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U.K. May Be an Election Away From Most Ambitious Green Plan

U.K. Could Be an Election Away From Most Ambitious Green Plan

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s deadline to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions potentially moved closer by 20 years.

The main opposition Labour party called for a move to reach the goal by 2030, two decades earlier than current government policy and leaving just a decade to radically wean the nation’s economy off fossil fuels. The ambitious goal would also put the U.K. ahead of other developed nations that plan to achieve the feat by the middle of the century.

With an election widely expected to take place sometime later this year, the plan could quickly move from party ambition to government policy, although a poll from last week put the Conservatives 9 percentage points ahead of Labour.

The plan, not yet a full policy, to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 was passed at the party’s conference in Brighton, England as part of a resolution for a “socialist green new deal.” Among the wide-ranging plans to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the party proposed to nationalize the so-called ‘Big Six’ utilities and large-scale public investment in renewable energy.

U.K. May Be an Election Away From Most Ambitious Green Plan

Former Prime Minister Theresa May had already committed the U.K. to a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, on par with what the EU plans for its 28-member bloc. Some of the U.S. democratic presidential candidates have also put forward 2050 as the goal to reach net-zero emissions.

Even with increased support from the state, it would be an enormous challenge for the U.K. to meet the Labour party’s goal. The country already has the most offshore wind power in the world, with a growing pipeline of new projects set to come online in the coming decade. But new plants take years to plan and build.

“While there is room for some industries to reach net-zero before 2050, it is currently not clear how this could feasibly be achieved in the transport, heating, and agriculture sectors and in energy-intensive industries like steel and cement,” said Josh Burke, a policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The Conservative Party was also critical of Labour’s plan.

“Labour’s plans to renationalise huge swathes of the energy system would scare away the investment that is so vital for reducing emissions, while leaving the taxpayer to pick up the huge cost,” said Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom.

The country will also have to solve how it will deal with a decreasing amount of nuclear energy. Currently about a fifth of the country’s energy comes from the low-emission power source, but most of the existing facilities are set to shut down in the next decade. The Labour party is against a plan to finance a new generation of reactors to replace them.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Mathis in London at wmathis2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Lars Paulsson, Andrew Reierson

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