The idea is that GBE, which has been backed with £8.3 billion of taxpayer cash over the next five years to invest in green technology, will team up with the king’s estate to attract between £30 billion and £60 billion of private investment, and bring online enough power by the end of the decade to power 20 million homes, Labour says.
The Conservative Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho called GBE “a gimmick.” Labour claims it will eventually help bring down bills; the Conservatives say it will ultimately force them up.
Starmer told reporters he wants to make progress after a “decade of lost opportunity.” He pointed to the Labour government’s early decision to end the de-facto ban on building onshore wind farms in England, in place since the days of David Cameron, as proof.
And he had a warning for local campaigners who might want to obstruct the party’s green momentum by blocking projects on their doorsteps. His government will make the “tough decisions” to build often unpopular infrastructure like power stations and pylons, he insisted.
“It’s the failure to take the tough decisions, the running away from tough decisions, that has caused over a decade of lost opportunity,” Starmer said. By changing the way the U.K. builds, the drive for green technology “will apply everywhere, whatever the rosette on the constituency — because we have to move this forward.”
Without radical action, Starmer argued that planning delays for things like wind farms and electricity networks would mean it “takes 30 years before we get the power.”
“We’re not going to go on like that,” he vowed, adding: “The race has started. The work has begun.”
